


Return, Rewind, Rewrite

by MaryPSue



Series: Return, Rewind, Rewrite [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Gen, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:25:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 34,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2781551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A family vacation to Gravity Falls, Oregon, now famous as the site of the Transcendence and the most magical place on Earth, calls into question everything Dipper Sterling thought he knew about his family and himself.</p><p>(Next year, he's going to ask if they can go somewhere less dangerous. Like an active volcano.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of the [Transcendence AU](transcendence-au.tumblr.com/summary) on [tumblr](transcendence-au.tumblr.com). It is a direct continuation of [this fic](http://haberdashing.tumblr.com/post/101113797119/rebirth) by [haberdashing](haberdashing.tumblr.com); it doesn't strictly need to be read before reading this fic, but everything will make much more sense if you do!

“We’re going _where_?”

Belle blew a bright pink bubble nearly the size of her head and grinned hugely when it popped. “Gravity Falls!”

The groan that Dipper let out was long and deep and heartfelt. He let his head flop back down against the bed, scowling up at the black spot on the plain white paint of the ceiling where he’d finally swatted the annoying mosquito that had been keeping him up at night. “Why, out of all the places we could _possibly_ go for a summer vacation, are we going to _Gravity Falls_?”

Belle just shrugged, turning back to ‘101 Things to Bedazzle’. “Who knows? I hope they have a crafting store. I’m going to need a _lot_ more gems.” She paused, tapping the fluffy end of her purple-and-pink polka-dotted pencil against her chin in thought. “And some brads. Ooh, _glitter glue_ ,” she gasped, in the reverential hush of someone in the presence of royalty.

“Do you even know what Gravity Falls _is_?” Dipper asked, turning to his twin, who didn’t answer, busily making a list on a pad of lavender paper. He threw himself back against the bed with an exaggerated sigh, explaining to the squashed mosquito on the ceiling, “It’s only the most magical place on Earth, where the veil between dimensions is the thinnest -”

“And it’s the centre of the disaster that brought magic into the world, blah blah blah magic, _and_ you’ll be constantly complaining about your head the whole time we’re there.” Belle gave Dipper a knowing glance.

“Magic gives me a headache, okay?”

“Uh huh. And candy gives _me_ a stomachache.”

“Where are you going with this?”

Belle didn’t answer, her eyes flicking instead to the charts of summoning circles and ancient runes hung along the walls by Dipper’s bed, the open book of magical history at his feet, the huge, elaborate dreamcatcher at the head of the bed with the real ram’s skull attached, the collection of unscented beeswax candles, plain white chalk, and the pocketknife with sigils carved into the handle tucked away on the bookshelf alongside copies of the Boy’s Own Grimoire and the Monster Fun Book of Fun Monsters -

Dipper groaned, again, dragging one hand down his face. “Okay, got it.”

Belle blew another bubble triumphantly, and squeaked when it popped, covering her glasses and most of her face; within seconds, she was giggling, the giggles turning to snorts even as she tried with little success to finger-comb bits of sticky pink out of her thick dark hair.

…

“Are you scribbling in that _nerd book_ again?”

“Belle!” Dipper slammed his notebook closed as soon as his sister leaned over his shoulder, tucking it defensively under his vest, away from her prying eyes. Belle just giggled, giving him a knowing look.

“What’re you writing about this time? Is it a _giiiiiirl_?”

“ _No_ , it is _not_ about a girl!” Dipper crossed his arms and frowned out the window at the pine forest whipping past, forgetting about his aggravation when something large and moon-pale peeped out from behind a log and dashed away on eight long, spindly legs at the sight of their vehicle. “Whoa, did you see that?”

“Nope.” Belle popped the ‘p’, leaning heavily on Dipper’s shoulder as she peered around his head, trying to get a peek of whatever he’d seen outside. For a moment, he thought maybe he’d got off the hook, but then she asked, “So are you gonna write about _that_?”

“I don’t know, maybe!” Dipper shifted his grip on the book that, if pressed, he would probably call a journal, but preferred to think of as a field notebook. “I wish I’d gotten a picture. I haven’t seen anything like that in any of the bestiaries or anywhere.”

When Belle, uncharacteristically, didn’t say anything in response, Dipper turned to her to make sure she wasn’t choking on her ever-present gum or something. She didn’t look like she was choking, though. Instead, she was staring straight ahead through the windshield with an awed, dumbstruck look Dipper had only ever seen her wear in the presence of unbelievably cute animals and that one time they’d visited the largest candy store in the state. “Belle?”

His sister only pointed, her eyes wide. Dipper followed her pointing finger and felt the moment that his own eyes widened.

Ahead of them on the road, spreading up and out as far as he could see, the air _shimmered_ , an oilslick rainbow hanging suspended in nothinginess.

“Daaaad?” Dipper asked, his voice rising as the little car rattled without slowing directly towards the wall of – well, it had to be magic, in some form.

“It’s all right, kids,” the twins’ father answered, his reassuring voice barely helping Dipper tamp down the panic that swelled in his chest as the wall of rainbow haze sped towards them. And then, before he could so much as brace himself, they were _into_ it, the world dissolving into a blur of lights and colours around them to a chorus of appreciative ‘oooh’s from Belle.

It wasn’t so much a _headache_ that magic gave him, Dipper had tried to explain to his twin once, but a pressure that built in his skull, getting stronger as the magic did, making it hard to concentrate, hard to think. He’d had some awful experiences getting caught around large workings, and he’d even passed out in class on the day they’d had a presenter in to demonstrate safe summonings. But nothing could have prepared him for this. Gravity Falls _was_ the most magical place on Earth, and even if he hadn’t already known that from years of fascination with the supernatural, he’d have been able to feel it the minute they crossed its borders. He wanted to burst out of the car, out of the bonds of gravity, out of his own _skin_ , it felt like he was going to _explode_ –

The world popped back to normal (well, ‘normal’; Dipper could have sworn he caught sight of several odd _somethings_ scattering away from the road as the car trundled onwards, and was it just his imagination or did some of those trees have faces?), and the pressure faded to a faint, manageable background throb in his head. Dipper let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, shakily taking his hands from his head, where he’d clutched it in his panic.

Belle was staring at him, her head cocked to one side. “Are you okay, bro-bro?”

“I…think so?” Dipper answered, quickly checking himself over. Everything still intact, good. He forced a big smile in Belle’s direction, but it quickly faded when, for once, she didn’t smile back.

“Your eyes went all weird for a second -” she started to say, in a low voice, but she bit off the rest of her sentence when their father glanced back into the backseat.

“How’re you doing, kids?”

“Just fine, totally, absolutely fine!” Dipper spat out, with a nervous grin. Their father looked over to Belle, who nodded quickly, beaming a hundred-watt smile back at him.

“All right,” their father said, a little curiously, turning back to the road ahead. “Well, welcome to Gravity Falls!”


	2. Chapter 2

Their father had booked a room at one of the two hotels inside the town limits, within the shimmering rainbow wall. They dragged their luggage up the porch of the fake-log cabin, Belle ogling the hulking carved grizzly bear in the corner, and into a practical museum of taxidermy. Dipper looked warily around at the stuffed animal heads gazing balefully down on them from practically every inch of every wall as their father checked in with the well-dressed but bored-looking redheaded girl at the counter.

“We’ve got a room reserved for Sterling?”

“Yeah?” The girl put down the fashion magazine she’d been reading, and flipped open a book full of names and dates instead. Dipper managed to tear his eyes away from the hundreds of creepy glass eyes fixed on him long enough to notice that she looked remarkably like a younger version of the legendary demon hunter Wendy Corduroy. He only realized he was staring when she caught his eye and winked.

Belle elbowed her brother in the side as they waited for the rickety-looking elevator to come down to their floor. “Gonna write about girls _now_?”

Dipper felt his cheeks heat up, but before he could explain, the elevator dinged and the doors slid open.

Their room was small, but cozy, with bare log walls and an exposed-beam ceiling, and two queen-sized beds. Belle dropped her backpack in the doorway and ran directly to the one nearest the window, bounding onto the bed and lying sprawled face-down across the comforter. “This is _so cute_!”

"Okay, so I guess we claim the bed by the window," Dipper sighed, picking up his sister’s bag and following her at a slightly more sedate pace.

They went for dinner at a diner that looked like it hadn’t been renovated since the Transcendence or maybe before, which Belle declared “ _too_ cute!” and Dipper privately decided was only cute if you thought that peeling paint, cracked pleather seats with the stuffing pouring out, and antique plumbing were cute, which he didn’t. At least the food was good, and there was lots of it. Belle ordered dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and enacted a dramatic battle between the T-Rex and a stegosaurus, complete with sound effects and ketchup ‘blood’, while Dipper got distracted from his mac and cheese by the strangest sense of déjà vu. After a halfhearted attempt to make Belle stop playing with her food, their father broke Dipper’s concentration on just where he could have seen something like the diner before by drawing both the twins into a conversation about where they’d like to go the next day. They finished the meal without making a solid plan, but Dipper forgot about the curious feeling for long enough to enjoy the rest of his supper.

As soon as they were all back at the hotel, though, once he was tucked into bed beside Belle, whose snores could probably be heard two rooms over, it was a little harder to shake off. The constant low pulse of background magic in the base of his skull was impossible to ignore, and Dipper couldn’t help thinking, ridiculous as it was, that his strange sensitivity had something to do with this place, and with the growing feeling that he _knew_ Gravity Falls, that he’d been here before.

He fell asleep still trying to puzzle it out, and dreamed about distant stars.

…

“How about this?”

Both twins looked down at the brochure listing the tourist attractions of Gravity Falls, reading the words their father was pointing to.

Belle wrinkled her nose. “A library?”

Dipper snatched the brochure away, devouring the short blurb about the Stanley Pines Memorial Library of the Supernatural. “We have to go there,” he said, in a rush, before he’d even completely finished reading.

His father adjusted his glasses, a smile spreading across his face. “I thought you’d want to see it for yourself.”

“Okay, what’s so special about this library place?” Belle asked, taking the brochure from Dipper and scanning the short write-up.

Dipper thought his jaw would hit the floor.

“What’s so – Belle, it’s built in the crater from the epicenter of the disaster! It’s the single most comprehensive library and museum of supernatural phenomena and paraphernalia in the _world_! It’s got original texts dating back to the Transcendence – there are journals in the collection there that are our only real source of knowledge about how _any_ of this happened.” He snatched the brochure back, trying to tamp down the flare of irrational outrage. “How do you not know this?”

“Because I’m not a great big giant _nerd_?” Belle asked, with a grin and a snort of laughter that said, clearly, that she didn’t mean a word of it.

“Hey, you guys talking about the Memorial Library?”

All three of the Sterlings looked up, towards the redheaded girl behind the counter, who had put aside her ever-present magazine and was looking across the lobby at them.

“Yes. Do you know anything about it?” the twins’ father asked, and the girl gave a little half-laugh.

“Yeah, sure, it’s the only thing in town that’s really worth seeing. I mean, the amusement park is pretty cool, but that’s outside the border, and you can go to one anywhere. And there’s that old meeting hall where all the cults used to do rituals and stuff, but it’s practically falling down now and there’s nothing to see there anyway. They give guided tours from the Library, but it’s a total rip-off; they just drive you around town and point out any creatures that get in your way. But yeah, you should go check the Library itself out, it’s pretty cool.” She shrugged, spinning in her office chair, swinging her feet in their impossibly high heels off of the counter. “Plus my family runs it, so I kind of have to send business their way.”

“ _Your_ family?” Dipper paused, as a suspicion that he’d been slowly building up suddenly crumbled. “Wait, then you’re -”

“Alice Pines.” The girl smiled, giving a little mock salute. “Stanley was, like, my great-great-granddad on my dad’s side or something. Maybe there’s another great in there somewhere, I always forget.”

“Wow, that’s weird, you look _exactly_ like Wendy Corduroy,” Dipper blurted, and then clapped both hands over his mouth. Belle’s face split into a huge and not entirely innocent grin as she looked back and forth from her brother to the girl, and the girl – Alice – raised an eyebrow.

“Thanks, I guess? I mean, she was a badass, I’m taking that as a compliment. I _am_ distantly related to the Corduroys, but that’s a couple generations back and everybody’s distantly related to everybody else in this town anyway.” She rolled her eyes. “Which is why dating around here sucks enough even when you _don’t_ end up on a blind date with a manotaur.”

Belle nodded sagely, as if she knew exactly what Alice was talking about and wasn’t a twelve-year-old whose dating experience consisted entirely of kissing practice with posters of boy bands.“Ah, the trials we endure in the name of love.”

Alice glanced over at the twins’ father, then at Dipper, before giving Belle a long, hard look that didn’t seem to faze Belle in the slightest. “Yeahhhh. Sure. Look, I have to go and feed the totem pole so it doesn’t start screaming in the middle of the night, but you guys have fun with…whatever you end up doing.”

“It was nice meeting you!” Dipper called after her, as she slipped out the door behind the counter. Alice didn’t answer, and didn’t turn around, but she did give a little wave before she shut the door behind her.

Belle didn’t stop grinning smugly the whole way to the Memorial Library.

…

“You _liiiiike_ her.”

“I do _not_.”

“Do so.”

“Do _not_.”

Belle giggled into the sleeves of her sweater. “Admit it. You are _smitten_.”

“I do _not like_ – hey, weren’t we supposed to turn the other way?”

The twins’ father hummed a noncommittal sound from the front seat. “Pretty sure the map said to take a right here.”

“That can’t be right.” Dipper reached into the inside pocket of his vest and pulled out the brochure, flipping it open and looking for the map as trees flew past. A poke to his arm made him look up, to see Belle grinning directly at him.

“You’re changing the subject because you know I’m right.”

“I am _not -_ ”

“You are too, you always do this when you know you can’t win.”

“I know I can’t win because _you_ won’t _listen_ to me when I tell you I _don’t. Like. Her._ And we definitely took a wrong turn back there!”

Belle didn’t dignify this with an answer. Instead, she poked Dipper’s arm again. “Boop.”

“Stop it.”

“Boop. Boop.”

“Belle, cut it out! I’m trying to read the map!”

“Kids, would you please stop arguing back there? It’s very distracting and I don’t want to miss our turn.”

"We’ve _already_ missed our turn!” Dipper jabbed a finger at the fork in the road clearly labelled on the map. “I _told_ you, we had to take a left for the Mystery Shack!”

Belle stopped with her forefinger extended for another poke. “The what?”

“What?”

“What you just said.” The look Belle was giving him was almost suspicious, and Dipper tried to think through the pounding in the back of his skull, to remember the last words that had come out of his mouth.

“We have to take a left for the library?”

Belle frowned. “You didn’t call it that.”

“What are you talking about? What else would I call it?”

Belle shrugged, but she didn’t stop frowning. “The mystery something?”

“What? Why would I -” Dipper stopped, and pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing heavily. “Look, whatever I called it, we had to take a left turn at that last fork to get there. It’s marked right here on the map.”

There was a moment of refreshing silence, and then the crunch of gravel under tires as their father pulled over to the side of the road. “Let me see.”

Dipper gratefully handed the map up to the front, and then leaned back, shutting his eyes against the light that only made the low buzz of magic in his head worse.

He tried not to think about the worried look he was somehow sure Belle was still giving him.


	3. Chapter 3

They’d barely gotten back on the right track when Dipper realized he’d made a terrible mistake. He’d been so excited about going to see the place where everything had started, where every question he’d ever had about the supernatural could maybe be answered, that he’d forgotten that it would mean going straight into the centre of all magical activity in the world.

And he could like magic as much as he wanted, but it definitely did not like _him_.

It wasn’t sudden, like it had been driving through the town’s border. He hardly even realized just how bad the pressure in his head was getting until he opened his eyes and his father and sister were nothing more than shimmering blobs of colour against a washed-out, wavering, dishwater-grey backdrop. He blinked, but even though the image swam crazily every time he opened his eyes, his vision didn’t go back to normal. He could only tell Belle had turned to face him because a blob of pale colour appeared in the dark of her hair, pinkish at first and slowly shading towards a worried bluey-yellow and wait, since when did colours have emotions?

“Hey, you look terrible.”

Dipper tried to muster a sarcastic retort, but all he managed was a low groan. His eyes _had_ to be playing tricks on him, because he was pretty sure his sister’s face wasn’t supposed to look so green. “ ’m fine.”

Belle’s colours flickered an unimpressed magenta for a moment, before the sickly bluey green bled back in. “Dad? Something’s wrong with Dipper!”

The car pulled to a screeching halt along the side of the road, the twins’ father stomping down on the brakes and spinning in his seat as soon as the car came to a halt. “What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”

“What? No, I’m -” Dipper pushed himself upright in his seat, wincing as a particularly angry throb threatened to tear his head in two. When he looked up, though, the scene in front of him resolved into its usual shapes and shades. He glanced over to Belle, and saw no sign of unnatural, worried colours anywhere around her head. “Fine? I’m fine. Huh.”

Belle crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes, snapping her gum, and Dipper realised that he’d never met anyone other than his sister who could make blowing a bright pink bubble the size of her head look threatening. “If you’re just saying that so that we can still go -”

“No, I mean it, I really am -” Another pulse of unbearable pressure cut Dipper off mid-sentence. He managed to sit perfectly still for almost a full second, reaching over without looking to roll the window down, before sticking his head out of the open window and throwing up everything in his stomach.

…

“Hey, you’re back early,” Alice remarked from behind her magazine, as the three defeated Sterlings trudged back into the lobby. “How was it?”

“We didn’t go,” Dipper said, shortly, glaring at a stuffed moose that looked back with a supercilious expression.

“What? Why not?”

Their father reached out and, ignoring the look of horror Dipper gave him, ruffled his son’s hair. “Somebody’s a little sensitive to strong magic.”

If looks could kill, the moose with the supercilious expression would be dead twice over.

Thankfully, Alice didn’t laugh. “Aw man, that sucks. What’re you gonna do now?”

“Regroup, I think.” The twins’ father let go of Dipper’s head with one last, mortifying, ruffle. “We were going to go up and get cleaned up, then get some lunch and make another plan for the afternoon.”

Alice looked thoughtful for a moment, and then nodded once as though she’d just made a decision. “Look, I know I told you that the tours were a total ripoff, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know how to run a real one. Let me call around, see if there’s anybody who could give you guys a decent tour of the town. One that, uh, maybe skips some of the worse magical hotspots.”

“You can _do_ that?” Belle asked, and Alice grinned.

“Believe me, kid, sometimes being related to everybody in this burg has its upsides.” She reached into her massive black shoulder bag, fishing through it until she pulled out a sleek black bullet-shaped thing that Dipper barely recognised as a phone. “You guys go grab some lunch. I’ve got a couple people to call.”

…

The diner was even more weirdly familiar in the light of day, and Dipper couldn’t shake the feeling that the rest of the lunch crowd were looking over at the Sterlings a little more often than usual. True, Belle was trying (with limited success) to balance her fries on her nose, but Dipper felt like the third or fourth time she did it, the novelty should have worn off.

“D’you want anything else?” their waiter droned, eyeing Belle’s twenty-third attempt at fry balancing with a condescending look that made Dipper’s fists clench. “Coffee, dessert…?”

Belle’s fry dropped into her open mouth, as most of the other twenty-two had, and she looked up with a huge grin. “ ‘Dessert’ is my middle name.“ She batted her eyelashes, and Dipper bit back a groan. “What’s yours?”

Their father shook his head with a smile, before turning to the waiter and asking, “What do you have for desserts?”

Their waiter (who really wasn’t all that much older than Dipper and Belle himself, but definitely acted like he thought he was) stared at the ceiling as he counted on his fingers. “Uh, apple pie, lemon meringue pie, hot fudge sundae…”

Belle’s grin grew wider, if that was even possible. “The fudge isn’t the only thing that’s hot around here,” she cracked, and Dipper winced. “But seriously, I need one of those. In my _mouth_.”

“All right then. We’ll have a hot fudge sundae, and one -” The twins’ father glanced over at Dipper, who nodded solemnly. “Two slices of apple pie, please.” Their waiter nodded, taking a note on the crumpled pad of paper he slipped back into the front of his apron. Dipper could swear he rolled his eyes as he turned and walked away, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it, because the little old lady two tables down was _definitely_ giving him a hard, interrogative look, and looked like she was about five seconds away from getting up and coming over.

“Dad,” Dipper started, but his father just sighed.

“Kids, I’m sorry about this morning. Especially for you, Dipper. I know how much you care about all this, and I thought it’d be nice to come out and see it all as a family. I didn’t even think -”

“It’s fine,” Dipper interrupted, hastily. The old lady two tables down had just started up from her seat, still staring in the Sterlings’ direction, and the younger woman sitting with her had pulled her back down.

“Well, it’s not really fair to either of you.”

“It’s _fine_ ,” Dipper repeated, with a little more force, turning his attention back to the conversation. “Seriously, I’m not upset. I was kind of worried something like this would happen, but I’m glad we came anyway. ” He looked over to Belle for backup.

Belle nodded, with a huge, sincere smile that, thankfully, got their father to smile too. “And now we can go to the amusement park instead!”

Dipper didn’t miss the way her smile shrank when she stole a glance in his direction, when she thought he wasn’t looking. He didn’t know what was worrying her, but it definitely had something to do with _him_ , and if that didn’t make him feel like the worst brother ever…

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Dipper announced, slipping out of the booth, and nearly slammed directly into the old lady he’d seen glaring at him earlier. “Aaah!”

“So it _is_ you,” the old lady hissed, leaning forward until she was almost eye-to-eye with Dipper, who tried to scoot back into the booth to get away. “I knew you’d be back, I _knew_ it!”

“W-what?”

“Ma! Oh my god, I am _so_ sorry.” The woman who had been sitting with the old lady had hurried over, and now she reached out, taking hold of one of the old lady’s wrists, only to get thwacked viciously in the shin by the old lady’s cane.

“Leave me alone, Margaret, I’m taking care of the family curse once and for all!”

“Ma, for the last time, there is _no such thing_ as the Northwest curse.” The woman called Margaret took a deep breath, brushing graying blonde hair out of her eyes as she tried with little success to pull her mother away.

The old lady just glared down at Dipper, venom in her fading blue eyes. “Oh, there’s a curse, all right. And he’s standing right in front of me.”

Dipper felt a tiny flame of strange, cold, _familiar_ hate spark to life in the pit of his stomach at her words. The faint pressure of magic, a constant annoyance since their arrival, suddenly pounded against his skull like a second heartbeat, making the world waver without warning into black and white. He wasn’t sure whether he grinned at the old lady, who flickered abruptly from furious red rage to icy blue-white fear, or just bared his teeth.

He was sure, though, that whatever expression was on his face, it turned into a smile of pure delight when the old lady let out a thin, quiet scream and fell backwards.

There was a moment of absolute silence.

Then someone shouted, and the world snapped back to normal, leaving Dipper shaken and staring as his father and the woman called Margaret tried to revive the old lady. The waiter returned with their desserts, and dropped the entire tray when he saw the old lady sprawled on the floor, spraying everyone in the way with ice cream and apple pie filling. He turned and ran back into the kitchen, returning a minute later with a defibrillator and the determined look of someone who was about to do something incredibly heroic and fulfill a lifelong dream at the same time.

As the whine of the defibrillator charging filled the air, Belle leaned over, without a word, wrapped her arms around Dipper, and squeezed both his hands. She didn’t let go until he’d mostly stopped shivering.

Then she whispered, “Your eyes did that weird thing again,” and Dipper nearly choked.


	4. Chapter 4

"What’re you doing?"  

Dipper didn’t look up from his notebook. “Making a list.”

Belle didn’t seem satisfied with his answer, crossing her arms and giving him an unimpressed stare, but Dipper barely noticed. His head was whirling just trying not to think about what had just happened back at the diner, about the way one of the paramedics had shaken his head when they carried the old lady out of the restaurant on a stretcher, the ashy colour her face had been, the quiet, desperate sobs that the woman called Margaret hadn’t been able to stop, whatever the other paramedic had been saying to her in a low, reassuring voice as she trailed along after her mother like a child. About his father’s grave expression and the deep, serious tone of his voice as he asked if Dipper and Belle were both all right, as he reassured them both that what had just happened couldn’t possibly have been either of their faults. How he’d looked directly at Dipper as he said it, as if he already knew what kind of awful, impossible theories were starting to circle his son’s head.

About the way the old lady had seemed to know Dipper, the way _he’d_ seemed to know _her_ , somehow, that feeling of hate so strange and strong and unexpected that it scared him. How he wasn’t sure his father’s reassurances, no matter how much he wanted them to be, were true.

Instead, he focused, hard, on the perfectly ruled blue lines on the thin page.

"What’s it a list of?"

Dipper didn’t answer, biting down on the end of his pencil as he stared at the handful of bullet points he’d pencilled carefully down on the blank page. There had to be some kind of connection he just wasn’t seeing, some missing piece that would string everything together and make it make sense. He _knew_ it.

Now he just had to find it.

"What, you’re actually not gonna tell me?"

Belle said it like it was a joke, but there was worry under her light, easy words.

“No! It’s just…stuff. Weird stuff,” Dipper answered, trying to shake off the feeling that she’d already asked him exactly that question, once before, under similar circumstances. This almost constant feeling of déjà vu was starting to get on his nerves.

Belle, clearly taking his answer as an invitation, flopped heavily over on him to read over his shoulder. “ ‘Headaches’? ‘Freaky eyes’?” She stopped, giving Dipper a look that wasn’t quite a glare, but still made him shift uncomfortably further towards his side of the hotel lobby couch.

“What? There’s other stuff there too!”

Belle’s eyes flicked down to the list, and then back up to her brother. “Nuh uh. Dippingsauce, this is all weird stuff about _you_.”

“Thanks,” Dipper muttered, crossing his arms and sinking down in his seat. This, unfortunately, put him eye-to-beady-glass-eye with a taxidermied beaver, perched on a low table beside the couch, clinging to a tree stump. He narrowed his eyes at it, but thankfully, its fixed expression of slightly concussed stupidity didn’t change.

“Oh, don’t be such a grumpus,” Belle said, grabbing his notebook from his lap, scouring the list with a frown of concentration. 

“What – no, Belle, don’t -” Dipper tried to grab the notebook back, but his sister just leaned away, holding the notebook up out of reach when he made a desperate lunge for it. He fell across her lap, faceplanting into one of the couch cushions, and she rested both arms across his back with a triumphant grin, sticking out her tongue when he craned his neck to glare at her.

“What are you being such a worrywart about? This is just -”

“Just a list of things that’re _wrong with me_?”

Belle was silent for a moment, and Dipper took the opportunity to push her off his back, sitting back up and taking the notebook back from her, staring at his own handwriting until it started to look unfamiliar and meaningless. “Ever since we got here weird stuff’s been happening – even more than usual – and all of it has to do with _me_ somehow! I have to figure out how it’s all connected, what’s _happening_ , before someone else -” His throat closed, choking off the words, but _before someone else gets hurt_ still hovered, unspoken, in the air like a thundercloud.

He didn’t look up until Belle reached out, her hands closing over his.

"Dipper," she started, her face unusually serious, "you are my brother and I love you, but you are being a great big _idiot_.”

Dipper opened his mouth to argue, but Belle reached up and gently (well, gently for Belle) pressed a hand over it. “Uh uh, silly, let me finish. Other than that lady having a heart attack, which, duh, you totally couldn’t have had anything to do with, what else has actually happened that’s all that much weirder than normal?”

Dipper pointed to his mouth, and Belle giggled, pulling her hand away. “It’s not just that, it’s - ever since we got here, I keep feeling like I’ve _been_ here before, and -“

“That’s _it_?” Belle blew a raspberry, waving a hand dismissively.

“I know it’s not exactly the most convincing evidence, it’s just - something here isn’t _right_.” He pressed the heels of both hands against his eyes, before reaching up to run them through his hair. “I just can’t put my finger on it - !”

"Dip _per_.”

"And have you noticed how everybody seems to be _watching_ us? I caught somebody _hiding behind a tree_ , Belle. In a _hood_.” The stranger had been waiting outside the hotel when they’d come back from the diner, and had given a decidedly not stealthy yelp when Dipper had caught him staring, turning and running with frequent glances back over his shoulder like he was in a horror movie. Dipper had looked behind him, but unlike the last time something like this had happened, there wasn’t a giant spiderpus bearing down fast on him.

Belle frowned thoughtfully at a stuffed bear head on the wall opposite. “Oh yeah. That _was_ weird.”

"See?!"

"But what does it have to do with you having freaky magic headaches?"

Dipper shut the notebook with a decisive slam. “That’s the part I still need to find out.”

Belle flopped back to lie flat on the couch with a groan, eyes turned towards the high ceiling. After a moment’s thoughtful chewing on her gum, a huge pink bubble bloomed from her mouth, growing and growing until it popped with an enormous bang.  Dipper, used to this, didn’t even look up.

“None of this started being a problem until we got here,” he said, mostly to himself, knowing that Belle had probably already moved on to another train of thought. He tapped the eraser end of his pencil against the page, and then wrote down _GRAVITY FALLS???,_ underlining the words so hard that the tip of the pencil broke.

“So maybe it’s something magic,” Belle said, as though it should be obvious, raising both arms straight up into the air and slowly sitting up with them outstretched in front of her, like an old cartoon vampire rising from the grave. “Or _maybe_ …you’re just being a paranoid pants. Bap,” she added, leaning in with a huge grin to punch Dipper in the arm.

Despite himself, Dipper felt a smile starting to threaten to make itself at home on his face. “Cut it out,” he said, and Belle grinned with a wicked gleam in her eye.

“Nope!” was all the warning he got before she launched herself across the couch, pinning him against its arm and tickling him mercilessly.

“Augh! Ahaha, Belle, stopitstopitstopit!”

“Not until you admit that you’re a huge dork!”

"Okay okay okay!" Belle pulled back, letting Dipper take a huge gasp of air, but she didn’t get off of him, and she didn’t stop grinning.

"Go _onnnnnn_ ,” she said, still grinning, as gracious as a queen.

Dipper considered his options, but there was still a glint of mischief in Belle’s eye and she looked a little too ready to start tickling again.

“ _Fine_. I, Dipper Pines, am a great big paranoid dork, and my sister Belle is a brilliant, sparkly -“

A snort of triumphant laughter from Belle cut him off. “I _knew_ it! I knew you had a crush on Alice!”

"What?"

If anything, Belle’s grin only got more wicked. “You just said Dipper _Pines_.”

“ _What_?! No, that’s not what I -“

"You’re in _looooove_. Dipper’s got a _giiiiiiirlfriend_ -“

"Whoa, Dipper’s got a girlfriend?" The door behind the reception desk opened with a rattle and a whoosh, and Alice slipped through, with a thumbs-up that made Dipper wish he could vanish on the spot. "Good going, you little Romeo. Who’s the lucky girl?"

"No one! There is no girlfriend!" Dipper snapped, with a pointed look at Belle, who just giggled and sat back so that she wasn’t pinning down his legs anymore.

“Oh well, you’re what, twelve? You’ve got plenty of time,” Alice said, unconcerned, as she dropped her bag on the reception desk with a clatter. “Take it from me, girlfriends are too much of a hassle anyway. Always wanting you to, like, take them out for dinner, or to the movies, or ‘do _something_ that’s not driving around throwing pinecones at the gnomes, Alice’.” She caught the look that both Dipper and Belle were giving her, and shrugged. “It’s practically a tradition around here. Tiffany just didn’t appreciate the finer points of culture in Gravity Falls. Speaking of which, we still on for that tour?”

"Yeah! At least, I think so." Dipper shot a glance in Belle’s direction, and she shrugged. “Dad’s been on the phone since we got back from the diner, and I don’t know what –”

On cue, the main door of the hotel swung open, the windchime hung over it tinkling slightly, and the twins’ father walked in, slipping his phone into his pocket. “Well, that went about as well as I expected,” he sighed, and then seemed to notice Alice had arrived. “Oh, Miss Pines. I’m very sorry we kept you waiting.”

Alice waved one hand like it was nothing. “Psssh, it’s cool. I was just giving these two some relationship advice.” She aimed an exaggerated wink in the twins’ direction. Belle stifled a giggle in the sleeve of her sweater, and Dipper slapped a palm against his forehead.

“I hope you didn’t go to too much trouble trying to set up a tour for us,” the twins’ father started, only for Alice to interrupt.

“Nah, I just called around to my cousins, but everyone’s either busy or Joey – and trust me, you don’t want the kind of tour Joey could give you - so I figured I could just do it myself.”

“Well, we won’t trouble you to do that -”

“Oh, it’s no trouble -”

“- because we won’t be going.”

“What?” Dipper demanded, and even Belle let out a groan and collapsed backwards onto the couch, the back of one hand pressed to her forehead dramatically. “Come on! Why not?”

Their father gave an apologetic smile, but he didn’t budge. “I’m sorry, kids, but it really isn’t going to work out. There’s a serious problem at work that I have to deal with, and if I can’t be with you -”

“Mr Sterling? Uh, sorry to butt in, but I can totally take them, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

The twins’ father gave Alice a blank look, as though the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly ask you to -“

Alice shrugged one shoulder. “Hey, we’ve been getting along fine, and if they want to go -“

"Yes!" Dipper and Belle chorused.

"Then I can pretend to be a responsible adult for, like, a couple hours while you deal with whatever you need to take care of. Unless you really wanna go as a family or something…?"

The twins’ father rubbed his chin thoughtfully, giving Dipper and Belle a questioning look. Dipper plastered on his best, biggest, shiniest smile, and out of the corner of his eye, saw Belle doing the same. “Are you sure? These two can be a real handful,” their father said, the corners of his lips tugging up in a failed attempt to keep a straight face, and Belle gave a huff of indignation.

"For your information, we are a _delight_.” She crossed her arms with a _fwap_ of slightly overlong sleeves, and defiantly blew a bubble, which burst, covering her entire face and clinging to the lenses of her glasses. “Augh! I’m blind! I’m blind!”


	5. Chapter 5

“So, how do you get to just take us places? Don’t you have, like, a job?” Belle asked, as they crossed the parking lot to Alice’s battered, mud-spattered Jeep.

Alice just smiled. “Please. Besides, you guys are like the only guests we’ve got right now.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah, haven’t you noticed?” She swung her massive black bag down from her shoulder, and began to fish through it. “Most people go to one of the big chain hotels outside the town limits – they’re a little more expensive, but they’re nicer, and besides, nobody really wants to stay inside the rainbow wall anyway.” With a jangle, she pulled her keys free of the bag. “Aha!”

“Why wouldn’t anybody want to stay inside the wall?” Dipper asked, looking around the parking lot. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he’d caught a glimpse of someone ducking behind a parked car. And all right, maybe Belle was right and he _was_ just a paranoid pants, but there was something about the way that everyone seemed to be watching them that had really put him on edge. “And what’s with the wall anyway? I thought the Transcendence destroyed the barrier that was keeping magic confined here.”

“Oh, it did,” Alice said, and swung the door open. “All aboard for the grand Gravity Falls sightseeing tour!”

It was only once they’d all piled into the Jeep, carefully buckled themselves in, and were bouncing along down one of the winding mountain roads at a speed that had to be unsafe that Alice picked up where she’d left off. “They put up the wall because the tourists kept complaining about all the weird stuff that happens around here.”

“What? Who comes to _Gravity Falls_ and complains about the weird stuff?”

Alice shrugged, taking a corner with a nonchalant expression and so much speed that Dipper clutched his seat and wondered if the Jeep had actually gone up on only two wheels or if it just felt like it had. “I know, but the charm kind of wears off when you wake up a different shape than you were when you went to bed. I dunno, I kind of get it. It’s not really _safe_ here, after all. It’s not like we just have more magic to go around. We get these random flare-ups that nobody can predict when or where they’ll happen, we’ve got the highest concentration of dangerous creatures in the Pacific Northwest, and that’s all without the demons -”

“Whoa, _demons_?” Belle interrupted, shooting a glare in Dipper’s direction. She leaned forward, until she was staring directly into his eyes, and prodded him in the chest with one finger. “ _Nobody_ mentioned _demons_.”

“I thought you knew!” Dipper protested. “It’s not exactly a secret.”

“Yeah, we’re basically the demon capital of the world.” Alice shook her hair out of her face, tucking a long, red lock back behind her ear. “There’s all the portals to other dimensions that keep popping up, the annual Halloween truce party…oh, and of course there’s Alcor.”

“Alcor? The Dreambender? Manipulator of Nightmares? The Forgotten One?” Dipper’s voice trailed off as he noticed the frozen stare Alice was giving him in the rearview mirror. “…The Twin Star?” he added weakly.

“That’s…a lot of titles you know, kid,” Alice said, and her voice, though still light and thoughtless, sounded suddenly forced.

“Dipper’s the best in our class in demonology,” Belle said, unfazed. “But he can’t do summonings at all.” She put a hand beside her mouth, and in an exaggerated whisper, added, “He always either passes out, or he gets these _sheep -_ ”

“ _Belle!_ ”

Alice laughed, and it sounded a little too loud and high-pitched. “Thank goodness, I thought you were into all this cult stuff.”

“What? No no no, I’m just -” Dipper stopped, trying to think of a way to explain that didn’t include the phrase ‘I just really like demons’. “It’s just…it’s all really interesting, you know? The – the supernatural, the Transcendence – and you know the theories that it had something to do with Alcor, right?”

“Here we go,” Belle sighed, but Alice, unlike most people confronted with Dipper’s enthusiasm for all things otherworldly, neither laughed nor rolled her eyes.

“ _Know_ them? Dude, I’m a _Pines_. I was _raised_ on this stuff. One of my first toys was a ‘My Little Alcor’.” The Jeep careened around another corner, narrowly missing a deer that unwisely tried to bound out onto the road in its path. “That’s why he hangs around here so much, y’know? _And_ why his cults are always so active around here, even though nobody’s actually seen him in over a decade.”

“Wait, wait – you know what caused the Transcendence?” Dipper asked, and Alice gave a loud snort.

“Yeah, I _wish_. Nah, there’s just a whole bunch of old family stories about it and how Alcor got linked to the Pines family. Some of them say he started the Transcendence, others say he was born out of it…” She waved a hand dismissively, veering hard to the left to avoid ploughing into a tree and throwing the twins up against the door of the Jeep before tumbling them back into their seats. “There’s even a couple that say he was _human_ to start with, which should tell you how ridiculous they all are.”

“…yeah,” Dipper echoed, wondering where the sudden sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach had come from. “Ridiculous.”

“It doesn’t matter, anyway. Nobody’s seen Alcor since I was just little, everybody who tries to summon him just gets his answering machine. And the journal that supposedly has the whole story got stolen from the Library a while after Great-Aunt Willow died. So I guess we’ll never know.”

“Demons have _answering machines_?” Belle asked, disbelievingly, and Alice grinned.

“Oh yeah. Remind me to give him a summons while you’re here, it’s hilarious. There’s some girl singing _really bad_ covers of these ancient pop songs -”

“That’s Mizar and are we going the right way?” Dipper interrupted, a little too loudly, looking back over his shoulder at the winding road they’d climbed and, over the tops of the trees, the retreating rooftops. “ ‘Cause I think the town’s _behind_ us.”

Alice’s grin only grew wider. “Hang on, we’re almost there.”

…

The Jeep burst out of the trees and skidded to a stop in a clearing, scaring up a handful of crows in a flurry of harsh caws and black wings. Alice killed the engine and hopped lightly out of the Jeep, waving towards the weathered stilt legs of the wooden structure that dominated the clearing. “Here we are!”

Belle and Dipper both looked around at the scrubby trees, low, broken wall, and scattered debris that filled the clearing, and then at each other.

“Oh, forget _this_ stuff,” Alice said, walking over to the wooden base of the structure, and putting one hand on a rickety-looking ladder wrapped in faded, tattered tape that might once have been yellow, printed with fragments of bold black lettering. “It’s what’s up here that we’re _really_ here to see.”

“Are you sure that’s safe?” Dipper asked. Some of the letters on that tape looked an awful lot like they might have once spelled out CAUTION.

“Pssssh,” Alice said, grabbing the ladder with both hands and pulling herself up with an alarming groan from the structure. “I’ve been up here a million times and I haven’t died yet. C’mon!”

That seemed to be enough for Belle, who shrugged and, giving Dipper a huge, mischievous grin, ran over to the ladder. She carefully prodded the bottom rung with one foot and, when it didn’t immediately collapse, started to clamber up the ladder like a monkey in an oversized hair bow and a glittery lime-green sweater.

Alice laughed. “All right, kid! Hey, Dipper, you coming?”

“Uhhh,” Dipper managed. He was pretty sure that if he squinted, he could still make out the word CONDEMNED on the square of weatherbeaten, sun-bleached paper pasted to the nearest leg of the structure.

Belle made an exasperated noise, one that Dipper was unfortunately very familiar with after twelve years of being her twin. “Come _on_ , Dipper.” She turned to Alice and said, in an exaggerated whisper, with a darting look at her brother, “He’s not coming.”

“I am _so_ ,” Dipper protested, marching up to the ladder. It looked even worse from close up, and he took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders before he took hold of a rung near his head and very, very carefully rested his foot on the lowest rung. It didn’t break, and he managed to make it up another two rungs before breathing out, a little shakily. The rest of the ladder was easier, and by the time he made it to the top, he thought maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

He straightened up, ignoring the smug smile that Belle was giving him, and looked up at the wall of the huge structure. It was cylindrical, its boards grey with age and starting to splinter apart, and frankly, it wasn’t very interesting. “What’s so special -” he started to ask, turning to face Belle and Alice, and then noticed that they were looking out from the narrow balcony he’d found himself on, back the way they’d come. And spread out before them, out past the clearing, was –

Alice turned at the sound of Dipper drawing in a sharp breath. “Pretty cool, huh? This old water tower’s got the best view for miles around.”

“It looks like a doll town,” Belle said, in a voice that, for Belle, was surprisingly hushed.

Dipper couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just nodded. A breeze, brisk from coming down off the mountain, tousled his hair and threatened to steal his cap, but he barely noticed. From up here, the town _did_ look tiny, like a bunch of doll’s houses, filled with tiny doll people, so easy to control, so easy to break –

“What’s that?” Belle asked, breaking the spell, and Dipper clapped both hands to his head, pinning down the cap that threatened to fly away and trying to ward off the throbbing headache that had slammed into him without warning.

Dipper barely heard Alice’s reply, focusing hard, instead, on taking deep, slow breaths. Slowly, too slowly, the furious pounding in his head ebbed away to a familiar dull, faint pressure, and he finally risked another look out over the town.

“Cool! And what’s that?”

Alice followed Belle’s pointing finger. “That? Oh, that’s Candy’s, it’s only the biggest – and best – hunting gear and magical paraphernalia shop in the state. We can stop in there later, if you guys want.”

Dipper peered down at the long, squat building that took up almost a whole block, tucked in behind the town’s main street. It looked ugly and intrusive, out of place, like someone had dropped a brick in the middle of the miniature town. And it wasn’t the only one. The longer he looked, the more certain buildings and features seemed to stand out, almost glaring in their newness, like the town was a hand-drawn map and they’d been scribbled in with red ink. He could almost picture the town as it might have been before it had been built up, before the world descended on it. Back when his grandparents might have visited, even back as far as before the Transcendence, when it was just a defiant little beacon of humanity in the vast dark wilderness…

“Uh, guys? Maybe we should, I don’t know, think about heading back down?” Dipper asked, breathing a sigh of relief when his voice didn’t squeak.

Alice cut off her spiel about the different buildings in the town centre and what totally hilarious things she and her friends had done to get kicked out of each of them to look over at him. “Hey, are you okay? You’re looking a little green. Not scared of heights or anything, are you?”

“What? No! Scared? Hah, I’m not _scared_ , it’s just…a little creaky up here! And it’s a long way to fall if something goes wrong.” It had nothing to do with the weird feelings that kept creeping over him every time he tried to look out at the view, Dipper added silently. Nothing. At. All.

Belle shot him a knowing look, but all she said was, “Nah, neither of us are bad with heights. We should go now, though. There’s only so much afternoon left!”

Alice looked from one twin to the other, and then shrugged. “All right, sure.” She started towards the ladder, and as she passed Belle, Belle gave Dipper a giant wink and a thumbs-up from behind her back. Dipper managed, with some effort, not to groan. He’d have to figure out how to tell Belle that he really wasn’t interested in Alice and make her actually believe it before Belle did something outrageous to try to get them together, but for now, he’d let Belle go on thinking he was mooning over a girl, instead of worrying that he was losing his mind.

“So,” Alice asked, as she started down the ladder, “where do you guys want to go first?”


	6. Chapter 6

“You should’ve let me get it,” Belle grumbled, as they trailed after Alice into the pet shop.

“I’m just saying, I don’t think Dad would be thrilled if you came back from a _sightseeing_ tour with a brand new grappling hook,” Dipper started, and then stopped, stunned into silence by the spectacle before him.

“Whoa,” Belle breathed, her eyes almost cartoonishly wide as she stared in awe around at the huge glass enclosures and cases set up around the wide, open floor, more like a zoo than the usual pet shop.

Dipper looked around, noticing small, bright eyes blinking from through leaves and behind branches, flashes of fur and scales and colourful feathers flickering between the trees as all sorts of creatures scurried into the backs of their cages and away from the newcomers. Along with the puppies, cats, and parakeets, there were creatures that defied description; one cage held something that looked an awful lot like a moss-covered log, but which humped itself up and crawled like an oversized caterpillar into the back of its cage as Dipper walked by, and a fishtank full of frilly tropical fish all suddenly turned invisible as he and Belle passed their tank. “Whoa is right.”

“Alice!”

Alice looked up, breaking into a wide grin as a dark-haired girl about Alice’s age emerged from a birdcage as tall as the room was which held two creatures that looked like nothing so much as eagles with electrified wings, stripping off a pair of thick green rubber gloves as she walked towards them.

“Nitaaaa!” Alice raised a fist, and Nita made one of her own, bumping it against Alice’s. “What’s shaking?”

“Not much, just feeding the thunderbirds, waiting for Casey to show up. You babysitting?”

“Casey’s late _again_? They’re so gonna get fired.” Alice shook her head. “Nuh uh, not babysitting. Guys? Meet Juanita. Nita, this is Dipper and Belle. I’m giving them the grand tour.”

“Oh, so you’re driving them around town and pointing out any creatures that get in your -”

“Not a _Pines_ tour,” Alice groaned, rolling her eyes. “The _grand_ tour.”

“What _is_ this place?” Belle interrupted, turning her wide-eyed stare on Nita, who broke into a huge smile.

“The best pet store there has ever been or ever will be.” She glanced up at the ceiling, and then launched into a speech that sounded like she’d rehearsed it a few thousand times. “With a proud legacy of unparalleled animal care, we are delighted to be able to offer the largest selection of specialty pets on the West Coast. Here at -”

“Nita! They don’t need the speech.”

Nita rolled her eyes, giving Alice a long-suffering smile. “No one around here appreciates my talents. Look, we’re part pet store, part magical wildlife sanctuary. Go have a look around – oh, but don’t touch. Most of the pretty, cuddly-looking ones have a wicked bite.”

Belle gave a little gasp of delight, and took off running, headed for the cages along the back that looked much, much larger than the ones in front.

“I’m gonna go make sure she doesn’t get eaten,” Dipper said, pointing with his thumb in the direction his sister had just gone. Both Nita and Alice laughed, and Alice waved him away.

“Just find me when you guys wanna leave, okay?”

As Dipper made his way to the back of the store, stopping every so often to peer a little closer at some creature he’d never seen up close before (and take a few short notes in his notebook), animals crawled or scurried or slithered or flew to the farthest corners and crannies of their enclosures, watching him with wary eyes from behind leafy branches or food and water dishes. A few even hissed or whined when he stopped to look at them more closely, and an enclosure full of kittens all stopped tumbling over each other to stare, silent and perfectly still except for the way their heads turned in eerie sync to watch him pass by.

Dipper shivered, keeping his eyes on the cage of kittens as he walked, until he was nearly walking backwards, squinting suspiciously at the kittens as they stared back, blue eyes wide and implacable. He didn’t look away until he bumped into Belle, who turned around and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Dipper! There you are!” Her voice dropped to an excited whisper. “ _Look_.”

She spun him around to face another cage holding another animal, which fluffed up its feathers and flapped its wings, kneading the sawdust in the bottom of the cage with tiny but wickedly sharp talons and letting out a warbling, curious cry.

“Is that -” Dipper started, and Belle let out a squeal that made him clap his hands over his ears.

“He’s a teacup griffin and isn’t he _cute?!_ ”

Dipper leaned down, putting himself eye-to-eye with the cat-sized creature, which flared its crest, giving a tiny, challenging shriek before lowering its head and…bowing?

Belle elbowed Dipper hard in the ribs. “You gotta bow back!”

“Okay, okay!” Dipper met the tiny griffin’s large, dark eyes, and slowly and carefully reached up and took off his hat. He ignored Belle’s whisper of “What are you doing?”, holding the hat over his heart as he slowly, slowly, bowed his head.

He stayed like that, staring at the scuffed linoleum of the floor until the griffin made another warbling noise, this time more curious than challenging. It was only then that he cautiously looked up again, only for the griffin to start pecking at his hair. “Ow!”

Belle giggled, pressing her cheek to the wire of the cage as she gazed in at the teacup griffin with a look Dipper had only ever seen her direct at cardboard cutouts of teenage pop idols. “He likes you! Isn’t he _perfect_? I think I’ll call him…hmm. What do you think of ‘Sir Mumblecrumpleton the First’?”

“What? Belle, _no_!”

Belle adjusted her glasses thoughtfully. “You’re right. That’s way too long.”

“No, I mean, we can’t just get a _griffin_! Do you know what Dad would _do_ to us?”

Belle pouted, her eyes wide and shimmering. The griffin cooed, giving one of Dipper’s curls a last tug, before flapping over to rub its head affectionately against Belle’s cheek.

“ _No_ ,” Dipper repeated, feeling a twinge of guilt that he hastily stamped on. “Remember what I said about the grappling hook? This would be ten times worse.”

“But just look at that cute little face!” Belle’s pout grew deeper, her lower lip quivering slightly for effect. Dipper crossed his arms and straightened up with a sigh.

“Well, if you really want him that much, you can wait until we get back and talk to – hey, aren’t you the guy who was watching us back at the hotel?”

Through the wire mesh that made up the walls of the griffin enclosure, Dipper saw the stranger’s eyes widen. It was _definitely_ the same guy, Dipper decided, as a look of abject horror crossed the stranger’s face and he stumbled out from behind the cage, nearly tripping over a rabbit hutch as he went, never taking his eyes from Dipper’s face. He had the same scruffy, straw-like blond hair sticking up in all directions, the same gangling neck and oversized ears, and, of course, the same tendency to hide behind things and spy on the Sterling twins. He also wore the same heavy, dark hood, which had fallen back over his shoulders, and the same almost comical wide-eyed look, like he’d just seen a monster and was in a hurry to get away.

“What are you doing? Why are you following us?” Dipper demanded, as the stranger tried to extricate himself from the fence meant to hold the rabbits in without looking away.

“Ah – ah -” the stranger started, his voice barely more than a squeak, took two steps backwards away from Dipper, and tripped over a rabbit. He fell into the other wall of the fence with a crash, entangling himself in wire mesh, and let out a high, thin scream that sounded absolutely drenched in terror.

Dipper just had time to think _oh no, not again_ before the faint, dull pressure of magic in the back of his skull burst into a hammering drumbeat, seeming to pulse through him in time with his heart. He looked down at the terrified stranger on the floor, who suddenly seemed very far beneath him, as small and insignificant as one of the doll-people he’d imagined filling the town back at the water tower, and as easy to break.

A smile stole across his face as he took a step forward –

“ _Dipper!_ ”

Belle’s shout cut across Dipper’s thoughts like a saw, and as though a bubble around him had popped, he suddenly heard the griffin’s shrieking cries mingled with a cacophony of animal sounds from all around, every creature in the shop screaming and racing around madly within their cages. The rabbits had bounded off into hiding somewhere – Dipper caught sight of one curled up, partially hidden, behind Belle’s back – but Nita was kneeling in the wreckage of their enclosure, grimly hacking at the wire mesh that had entangled the stranger with a pair of wire clippers. The stranger had stopped screaming, and was now only staring at Dipper, his eyes wider than ever and bugging out slightly, his face pale and turning bluish by the second.

The wires wrapped tightly around his throat suddenly gave under Nita’s clippers, and the stranger gasped in a huge breath of air before abruptly passing out nearly in her lap.

Dipper took a step back.

Nita glanced up at him with the wire cutters in one hand and the other resting on the side of the stranger’s neck, searching for a pulse. She gave him a long, hard look, before turning to Alice, who hurried up behind her. “Call 911.”

“What happened?” Alice looked around, taking in the scene, her gaze fixing on the half-strangled man on the floor. “Oh my _god_ , what’s going on?”

“Call 911  _now_ ,” Nita said, dropping the wire clippers and leaning over to press both hands, one on top of the other, into the stranger’s chest.

Alice blinked twice, then thrust a hand down into her bag, fishing around until she found her phone. She punched in the numbers, and almost immediately started gabbling at the operator, her voice rising with panic.

Dipper, forgotten in the rush, glanced over at Belle, seeing his own fear mirrored on her face.

 “I -” he started. “I didn’t – I didn’t mean -”

Belle didn’t say anything, but her stare stopped him cold without a word.

“I’m so sorry,” Dipper said, at last, before turning around and emptying the contents of his stomach onto the linoleum floor.

…

By unspoken agreement, the rest of the tour was cancelled.

They drove back to the hotel in silence. Alice’s driving was almost careful in comparison with her earlier recklessness, and Dipper noticed that her knuckles were white against the steering wheel, her eyes fixed, unblinking, on the road ahead.

Belle, on the other hand, didn’t take her eyes off Dipper. He ignored it for as long as he could, but finally, her silent staring was just too much to take. He spun to face her, a challenge already forming in his head, but it died on his lips when she asked, quietly, “Are you okay?”

Dipper bit back the urge to give a sarcastic answer and, not really trusting his voice, shook his head.

Belle nodded, shifting over in her seat and holding her arms open. “Thought so. C’mere.”

Dipper gratefully leaned into the hug, and Belle rested her chin on top of his head. They stayed like that, hardly moving, for the rest of the ride.

Their father was sitting at the desk in their hotel room when they walked in, the phone held to his ear, nodding along to whatever the person on the other end was saying. He looked up at the sound of the door swinging open, and gave the twins a strained-looking smile.

“I’m sorry, I’ll have to cut this short. Yes, they just got back.” The twins’ father gave a short, unamused laugh, turning away from them, and scribbled something on the pad of paper next to the phone. “You too. Thank you again. This has been an enormous help.”

He hung up the phone with a click, and turned back to face the twins, rising from the chair as he smiled directly at Belle. “Well? How was it?”

Belle looked over at Dipper, who met her eyes and read the unspoken question there. _What are we gonna tell him_?

“I hope you two behaved yourselves for Miss Pines,” their father said, frowning, and Belle aimed her best kilowatt smile at him.

“Of _course_ we did!”

“Yep! Ha ha. Noooo problems here,” Dipper managed, weakly, forcing a grin that he hoped didn’t look too much like a grimace. Belle had the right idea. Enough had already gone wrong on this vacation; their father didn’t need to be bothered with one more thing.

He felt sure that their father would see right through the thin lie, that he’d know that something was wrong and demand to know the truth, but strangely, their father barely even glanced at Dipper before nodding. “Well, all right then. Where do you two want to go for dinner?”

…

“Belle. Belle. _Belle_.”

Belle rolled over under the covers, cracking one eye open ever so slightly to glare at Dipper, who gave her arm one more poke just for good measure. “Dip, I am _trying_ to _sleep_.”

“Sorry. But this is important.” Dipper pushed himself up on one elbow, peering over his sister at the other bed, from which faint snores were emanating, before dropping back down and pulling the covers over both their heads. “Have you noticed that Dad’s acting strange?”

“No. Good _night_ , Dipper.”

“No no no wait!” Dipper flicked on his flashlight, and Belle groaned, squeezing her eyes shut against the sudden bright light. “Belle, he wouldn’t look at me all through dinner.”

“That’s not true,” Belle mumbled. “Why do we have to do this _now_?”

“Because I think he’s asleep and all right, so he did _look_ at me, but only when he absolutely had to. And he won’t meet my eyes. And wouldn’t he usually want to know more about how our afternoon went? It’s like he knows we’re lying, but he doesn’t _want_ to.” Dipper bit his lip, drumming his fingers against the mattress. “Do you think he already knows about what happened at the pet shop?”

“I don’t know. Can’t we figure it out in the _morning_?”

“Belle, this is serious! If he knows, why would he be keeping it from us?”

“Dipper.” Belle grabbed the flashlight, shining it directly onto her own face. “Listen to me. You were right, something weird is _definitely_ going on around here -”

“Wait, you’re saying I’m _right_?”

“ _Yes_. But we can’t do _anything_ about it right now, and we both need sleep. I will talk to you in. The. _Morning_.” She clicked the flashlight off, and threw the covers back off of their heads.

Dipper opened his mouth to protest, and out of the dark, Belle’s voice said, in a loud whisper, “ _Good night_.”

Dipper let out a frustrated huff, and rolled over to face the window. A faint moonbeam glow leaked in around the heavy curtains, and he sighed, pulling the covers up around his chin.

He hadn’t thought he’d be able to sleep at all, after everything that had happened that day, but the bed was surprisingly soft, and deep, and warm, and it wasn’t long before he felt his eyes starting to sink shut.

…

He woke up only once, with the sounds of terrified screaming and delighted, cackling laughter ringing in his ears, and stuffed his face into the pillow to keep from screaming himself.


	7. Chapter 7

“What are you doing?”

Dipper looked up from his father’s suitcase, to see Belle sitting up in bed. “Shh. He’ll hear you.”

“No he won’t, he’s singing in the shower, he doesn’t hear _anything_ when he’s singing in the shower,” Belle said, rubbing sleep from her eyes and reaching over to the bedside table for her glasses. “Remember that time we accidentally blew up the microwave? But seriously. What are you doing?”

Dipper flipped the lid of the suitcase shut, and unzipped the front pouch. “Dad wrote something down when he was getting off the phone. I want to know what it was, but the note’s not on the pad anymore.”

“Why don’t you just ask him like a normal person?” Belle asked, looking at the lenses of her glasses and wrinkling her nose. “Yuck.” She breathed on each lens in turn, wiping them off with a corner of the bedsheet.

“Because I don’t want him to know that – hey, wait a second.” Dipper zipped the front pouch of the suitcase shut. He jumped up and crossed the room, reaching into the inside pocket of his vest which lay draped across the armchair by the window, and pulled out his pencil.

“What are you doing _now_?” Belle asked, as Dipper grabbed the pad off of the desk and started rubbing the flat of the pencil lead over the blank note on top. He didn’t answer, too absorbed by the numbers that were taking shape on the page.

“Aha!” He squinted at the string of digits that his rubbing had revealed, indented into the notepad by the pressure of his father’s pen on the top sheet of paper. “It’s…a phone number?”

Belle gave her glasses one last polish and slipped them onto her face, throwing back the covers and crawling to the foot of the bed. “Yep,” she agreed, after peering at the paper. “Well, you found your mystery note. Now are you going to tell me why you’re fishing around in Dad’s stuff  like you’re some kind of spy or something?”

Dipper didn’t answer at once, staring at the graphite-covered page in his hand.

“Remember what I told you last night?” he said, eventually, and Belle groaned. “I think he knows something that he’s not telling us, but he doesn’t want us to know that he knows. Uh.”

“That made _no_ sense,” Belle commented cheerfully.

“I know!” Dipper buried his face in his hands, taking a deep breath and biting back a scream that threatened to force its way out. “Argh! It’s just – I have to do _something_! Everything’s weird and people keep getting hurt and that happened _twice_ in _one day_ and if I can’t figure out what’s going on and _do_ something about it then -”

“Okay,” Belle said.

“And there’s no way I could have had anything to do with what happened to either of them but I _did_ , Belle, I _know_ it, but I can’t _explain_ it, and – okay?”

Belle reached out and took hold of both of his hands, stopping his flailing and his tirade at the same time. “Okay,” she repeated, nodding. When Dipper just gawked at her, she sighed. “Bro-bro, I know you’re scared. I’m kind of scared too. But we’ll figure it out, okay? Together.” When Dipper didn’t answer immediately, she punched him in the shoulder, her smile growing wider. “Okay?”

Dipper took a shaky breath in. “Okay.”

“Which means don’t leave me out of the cool detective stuff!” Belle gave him another, harder, punch in the arm, nearly knocking Dipper over. “C’mon, Dad’s gonna get out of the shower soon. Are you gonna call that number or what?”

Dipper took another deep breath, and reached up for the phone.

The beep of each key as he pressed it sounded way too loud in the quiet hotel room, and Dipper paused after every press, listening hard to hear if his father’s off-key warbling had stopped. But the roar of the shower and his own voice must have kept the twins’ father from hearing anything, because neither the water nor the singing so much as paused.

The phone rang three times before someone picked up, and a deep, pleasant voice on the other end of the line said, “Pines Supernatural Investigations, how can I help you?”

Dipper met Belle’s eyes, only to see they were as wide as his.

“Hello?” the voice on the other end of the line asked.

“Hi? Um, I just found this number,” Dipper said, cupping a hand in front of his mouth and the receiver. “Uh, what exactly do you do?”

There was a laugh from the voice on the other end of the line. “We’re the foremost paranormal investigators and experts working in the field right now, kid. We research and investigate supernatural phenomena, and we help people with magical problems – and magical creatures with people problems, sometimes.” He paused, and then added, “Hey, where’d you say you found this number?”

“Not important. Did you get a call from a Mr Sterling yesterday afternoon?” Dipper asked.

The voice on the other end of the line suddenly sounded a lot less pleasant. “Who’s asking and why?”

“This is his son,” Dipper said, with a glance at Belle, who nodded, giving him a smile and a thumbs-up. “He, uh, asked me to call and see what you’d found out?”

He resolutely ignored Belle’s stage-whisper of “Cool detective stuff!”.

“Oh! Oh, no problem.” There was a rustling noise from the other end of the line, and the voice, a little muffled like the owner was moving away from the speaker, said, “We’ve been checking out that journal your dad brought in, and you can tell him that I said I think it’s authentic.” There was a scraping sound, and the dry slap of pages turning. “Of course, I can’t verify that officially just yet, but the handwriting definitely looks the same and all the dates match up. Except for the parts in blue ballpoint and, uh, this section in glitter gel pen.”

Dipper turned to face Belle, who looked about as confused as he felt. She shrugged, mouthing the word, _Journal?_

“But I’m sure we’ll figure out what _that_ ’ _s_ all about. I’ve been reading some of it, and it looks like someone else picked up the journal at a much later date and started it again.” There was a final-sounding snap, like a book shutting, and the voice on the other end of the line grew close and clear again. “But yes, while I can’t tell you anything officially yet, it is my professional opinion that this is, indeed, Stanley Pines’ third journal.”

Dipper didn’t mean to put the phone down. His hand just seemed to drift down into his lap of its own accord, turning the voice that echoed from the handset tinny and distant.

“Hello? Hello?”

Belle licked her lips, opening her mouth like she was about to speak, but just then, the sound of the shower cut off.

The twins met each other’s eyes, and then Dipper turned and pressed the phone back into the cradle as carefully as he could as Belle crumpled up the rubbing of the phone number and crawled back into bed, curling up and pretending to be asleep. She sat bolt upright as Dipper climbed in on the other side of the bed, pulled off her glasses, set them carefully back on the bedside table, and flopped back down again just as the bathroom door swung open, letting a billowing cloud of steam and their father out into the room.

“Still in bed, sleepyheads?” He rubbed his towel over his hair, shaking his head. “Rise and shine, you two, I’ve got a full day planned for us!”

Belle made a show of yawning and stretching, leisurely throwing off the covers and reaching for her glasses. “Boy, did _I_ ever have a _great_ sleep last night! I sure am glad that nobody _interrupted it_ ,” she said, with a pointed look at Dipper, who still had the covers pulled up around his ears, his head spinning. A frown crossed her face, and she poked him, hard, in the ribs. “I _said_ , I sure am glad that _nobody -_ ”

“Ow! I know, I know, I _heard_ you.” Dipper tried to burrow back down under the covers, but Belle tugged them away, giving him a huge smile with just a hint of sadistic glee. “Uh, what’s the big plan?”

He didn’t miss the way his father’s smile faltered, just for a second, as he glanced over at Dipper, before he turned to face the window and his smile turned back up to full wattage. “Belle, I know you wanted to go to the amusement park -”

The rest of his sentence was drowned in Belle’s excited shriek. “Yes! I’m gonna ride the zero-gravity coaster until I throw up cotton candy _everywhere_.” She pumped a fist in the air, giving Dipper a nudge with her elbow. “C’mon, Dippingsauce, this is _exciting_.”

The smile that Dipper managed to muster felt awkward and uncomfortable, and he was sure it wouldn’t fool anyone, but Belle just sighed, something softening in her eyes as they met his. “I won’t make you go on the coaster,” she said, with a cautious glance in their father’s direction.

“Are you kidding?” Dipper laughed, and thankfully, it sounded a little more natural than his smile had felt. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

…

“All right, here’s the plan.”

Belle rolled her eyes, but she leaned down to put her head on level with Dipper’s, close enough to hear him over the old transcore song blaring from the radio even though he was speaking in an undertone, and to look at the notebook page he’d torn out and spread out on the back seat of the car. “Why do we need a plan, anyway?”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that,” Dipper said, biting the end of his pencil. “Okay. I _need_ to get a look at that journal. It’s got to be the key to everything.”

Belle tipped her head to one side, leaning closer to the paper until she was between it and Dipper, so that all Dipper could see was the back of her head. “Or it could just be an old book.”

"No, Belle -" Dipper stopped, realising he’d raised his voice, and snuck a look into the front seat of the car, but his father only gave the twins a quick glance in the rearview mirror and shot a very nervous-looking smile in Dipper’s direction when he met Dipper’s eyes in the mirror, before turning his eyes immediately back to the road. The knot of tangled feelings, outrage and fear and just a tiny bit of guilt, that had been winding through Dipper’s chest since the moment he’d hung up the phone contracted painfully, and he turned abruptly back down to the piece of blue-lined paper in front of him, his eyes stinging.

“No,” he continued, in a near-whisper, ignoring the worried look Belle was giving him. “That book has to be why we’re here. You heard what Alice said – it has the truth about what happened in the Transcendence. We’re here at the site of the Transcendence, and the home of the only people who might be able to tell if the journal is real or not. And there’s something about the magic here, something about this _place_ , that’s causing everything that’s happening to me.” He gently pushed Belle’s head out of the way, drawing a circle around the words _GRAVITY FALLS???_ and a quick, short line connecting it to the list of strange things that had happened the day before. “What I don’t know is why Dad didn’t just tell us about it. There has to be something in that book that he wants to keep a secret from us. Which means that if we want to know what’s going on…”

Dipper quickly sketched a line connecting _GRAVITY FALLS???_ to another circle he drew around the hastily-scribbled words _JOURNAL #3_.

“…we have to get a look at that journal,” he finished, tapping the point of the pencil triumphantly against the _3_.

Belle blew a bubble, staring thoughtfully at the paper until the bubble popped. “So how are we going to do that? You can’t get near the Library without puking.”

“Aha, but _that_ ,” Dipper said, flipping over the sheet of notebook paper with the air of a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, “is where the plan comes in.”


	8. Chapter 8

The first step was almost too easy. Dipper didn’t think he’d even have to fake the nauseating, feverish feeling that swept through him along with the pounding magical headache as they passed back through the wall, but to his surprise, the overwhelming pressure seemed less crippling this time around. Though he still felt like he was going to burst out of his skin, there was something almost familiar about the feeling, in a way that had nothing to do with the fact that he’d had four similar attacks already in their visit. It must just be easier because he knew what was coming and could brace for it, he decided, trying to ignore the persistent feeling, almost as strong as the headache, that this was how things were supposed to be. That if he just let go, stopped fighting in some way that he couldn’t explain and didn’t really even understand, then the pain would stop and all that would be left would be the power…

He knew it was part of the plan, but a little twinge of guilt still nibbled at the pit of his stomach when Belle looked over and asked, “Are you okay?”

Dipper let out a long, drawn-out groan that was only slightly exaggerated. He risked a quick peek, but their father was still staring fixedly at the road ahead, resolutely ignoring anything happening in the backseat. Dipper gave another, louder, longer groan, throwing an arm across his eyes for good measure. Through the fizzing, hissing white-noise feeling and systolic thump-thump-thump of magic pressing against the walls of his skull, he heard Belle say, her voice heavy with exaggerated concern, “Are you going to be okay to go on the zero-g coaster with me?”

Dipper couldn’t help a smile and a little huff of laughter at that, followed quickly by a short moan as the motion caused a sharp spike of pain in his head.

By the time they pulled into the parking lot, Dipper was feeling nearly normal again, but he didn’t take his arm away from his eyes, still shielding them from the light. He waited as the engine cut out and the car doors slammed open and shut before cautiously pulling his arm away, squinting as though the light still hurt his eyes. He sat up, slowly, looking around, grimacing every so often for effect.

"Aren’t you _coming_?” Belle nearly shouted directly into his ear, bouncing on the car seat beside him, and Dipper didn’t have to fake a wince.

"Ow, Belle, not so loud, _please_.”

"Whoops," Belle said, in an exaggerated stage whisper, before grabbing Dipper’s wrist and pulling him after her out of the car. "C’mon! If we hurry maybe we’ll only have to wait two hours in line!”

"Are you feeling all right?" their father asked, as Dipper stumbled out of the car after Belle, still squinting and clutching his head. He still wouldn’t meet Dipper’s eyes, directing a concerned look in the general area of Dipper’s forehead instead. “You don’t look so good. We don’t have to -”

“No no no, I’m fine!” Dipper hoped his smile looked forced. “Let’s go get tossed around upside down at high velocity! Ha ha ha. This is fine. It’s fine.”

The twins’ father looked almost as though he was going to argue, but something stopped him just before he could open his mouth. He nodded, lips pressed tightly together, gazing off towards the top of the Ferris wheel and the occasional flying car from the zero-g coaster rising above the fence encircling the amusement park, apparently lost in thought as distant screams rose and fell. “Well, if you say so. But tell me if you change your mind, all right?”

Dipper nodded, wincing one more time for good measure. As soon as his father looked away, he winked at Belle, who grinned and gave him a thumbs-up.

Step One of the plan was underway.

In the end, they only had to wait for forty-five minutes in line for the coaster, forty-five minutes which Belle spent excitedly gushing about how _great_ it was going to be and how much _fun_ she was going to have and how their father was the _best dad ever_ , and which Dipper spent carefully pretending to be feeling worse and worse the further they inched up the line. Finally, with only a few feet left between them and the ticket-taker, Dipper made his move.

"Uh, Dad? I…really don’t feel too good."

Belle stopped short mid-sentence, and their father turned to face Dipper, worry putting a crease between his eyebrows. He still didn’t meet Dipper’s eyes as he asked, “What’s the matter?”

Dipper shrugged, keeping his eyes turned towards the sandy ground and the few forlorn blades of well-trampled grass that somehow, miraculously, survived. “I think it’s just headache left over from coming back through the wall. I’ll be fine, I just don’t really want to get flipped upside down at high speeds right now.” He made a face, trying to ignore Belle’s triumphant grin from behind their father’s back.

"We don’t have to ride this ride if you’re not feeling well," their father said, and Belle winked at Dipper, before her face crumpled and she launched into a surprisingly convincing tirade.

“ _WHAT_? We’ve been waiting in line for _forty-five minutes_! This line is _never_ going to be this short again! If we go back now it could get long enough for us to be waiting all day and I could miss this ride _entirely_!” She pouted, her eyes shimmering behind the lenses of her glasses. “ _Please_ don’t make me miss this ride entirely because I will _literally_ _never be happy again_.”

“It’s okay,” Dipper said, quickly, before their father really had a chance to do more than look bewildered. “I can sit this one out on my own, you guys don’t have to miss it too.”

"You don’t have to do that -" their father started, but Dipper waved a hand.

"I’ll be okay. Besides, I’m not the one who really wanted to go on the coaster anyway."

Belle gave an enormous grin, looking up at their father with wide, pleading eyes, and he sighed.

“You really want to ride this roller coaster, don’t you.”

“I really really _really_ want to ride this roller coaster.”

"I could, maybe, hang on to your wallet and stuff so it doesn’t fall out of your pockets when you get flipped upside down?" Dipper suggested, trying to sound casual, and Belle gasped in a breath.

"That’s a _great_ idea.” She rummaged around in her pockets for a minute, and then shoved three packs of bubblegum, a handful of sparkling plastic gems, a laser pointer, a sheet of stickers, several wrapped candies, and a glue gun into Dipper’s hands, resting her hands over his for a moment after she did so and staring into his eyes with the utmost seriousness. “Guard these with your life.”

"Where were you _keeping_ all this?”

Belle held one finger up in front of her lips. “A lady never reveals all of her secrets.”

Dipper couldn’t help but laugh as he carefully tucked Belle’s treasures away in his vest. “Dad?” he asked, holding out a hand.

For a moment, Dipper thought their father was going to refuse, and his head whirled with half-formed backup plans, before their father reached into his back pocket, pulling out his wallet and - _yes_ _!_ \- his phone. “Are you _sure_ you don’t want me to sit with you?”

“ _Dad_. Yes.”

Their father gave another sigh, and shook his head. “Well, there goes my last chance to get out of getting tossed around upside down.”

Belle’s face split into an even wider grin, and she grabbed hold of their father’s sleeve, dragging him along after her towards the ticket-taker. “Don’t worry, only about half the people who ride it throw up!”

Dipper stepped out of line, waiting by the fence until they were both strapped into a bullet-shaped car, Belle waving ferociously until the car started to rise out of sight. When he couldn’t see her face anymore, he slipped away, headed for the bathrooms he could see hidden behind the cotton candy stand.

Step One was complete. It was time to start Step Two.

Dipper waited until the only other person in the bathroom finished washing their hands and left before unlocking his father’s phone (technically, Dipper wasn’t supposed to know the password, but their father always used the twins’ birthday as his password for _everything_ ) and scrolling through the list of recent contacts until he found the one he was looking for.

Alice picked up on the fourth ring. “You’ve reached the Wee Sleep Inn, how can I help you?”

"Alice? I need a favour."

"Dipper!" Alice dropped the professional tone almost instantly, a smile working its way into her voice. "What’s up, dude? Whatcha need?"

Dipper glanced over at the door. “Your family runs the Mystery Shack, right? Do they have a paranormal investigation agency too?”

"Yeah, my uncle Mike - wait, what did you just call the Library?"

Dipper groaned, smacking the palm of his free hand against his forehead. “Never mind. Look, my dad took a book over there yesterday afternoon while you were giving us that tour, and I really need to have a look at that book. I know this is a lot to ask, but could you -“

"Steal it for you?" There was a note of excitement in Alice’s voice that she quickly squashed, trying to sound bored. "Hmm, I don’t know. What’s in it for me?"

She sounded like she might be joking, but Dipper still answered, “Fair food. Hot pretzels the size of your head. All the cotton candy you could ever want to eat in one sitting. Deep-fried _everything_.”

"Okay, that _is_ tempting,” Alice laughed. There was a distant tapping sound from the phone, and then she said, “Dipper, you got yourself one book coming right up.”

A single pulse of unbearable pressure flooded Dipper’s head, and he heard himself say, as though from a distance, “Deal.” It didn’t quite sound like his voice.

"Deal," Alice repeated, with a waver of uncertainty in her voice that had definitely not been there before. "Are you in, like, a really echoey room or something, because -"

The bathroom door swung inwards, and Dipper, offering silent thanks to luck or fate or whatever had just given him the perfect excuse, said, “Gottagobye!” and hung up, stuffing the phone in his pocket and hurrying over to the sink just as his father walked through the bathroom door.

"Dipper? Are you all right? Belle said she thought she saw you come in here."

Dipper turned on the cold water tap, and splashed water on his face, looking up and nearly catching his father’s eyes in the mirror before his father looked sharply away. “Yeah, I just - yeah, I’m fine. How was the ride?”

"It…went a little better for me than for Belle," his father said, with a smile.

From outside, Belle’s voice quavered, “I was right. Half the people who rode it threw up.”

…

"So how’d it go?" Belle muttered, as they stood off to the side of the ticket stand, waiting for their father to finish buying more tickets. Dipper was still amazed by how quickly she’d recovered from the zero-g coaster, and by how many rides she’d managed to drag them all onto in one short morning, but he was most amazed that in all that time, he hadn’t had a single chance to actually _talk_ to her.

"Fine. See, what’d I tell you? This is what plans are _f_ _or_.” Dipper squared his shoulders proudly, adjusting the brim of his hat. “Oh, and I said we’d bring her fair food in exchange for her help.”

Belle nodded approvingly. “Nice touch. Do you think she likes caramel apples? Wait, what am I _saying_. Of _course_ she likes caramel apples.”

"What are you two talking about so seriously?" their father asked, pocketing a roll of tickets as he walked over to Dipper and Belle.

The twins exchanged a look, before Belle answered, “We want to get something for Alice…to say thanks for taking us on that tour yesterday?”

Their father raised an eyebrow, but he looked more surprised than disbelieving. “That’s very thoughtful of you. What kind of -“

The rest of his sentence was lost in an enormous, thunderous crash from somewhere back towards the Ferris wheel, and the sound of screaming.


	9. Chapter 9

Dipper spun to face the commotion before his brain had a chance to catch up with his body. “What the heck was _that_?”

"Did something explode?" Belle stood up on tiptoes, leaning on his shoulder as she stared over in the direction of the crash. "Oh wow, look at how the Ferris wheel’s shaking!"

Around them, a worried murmur began to rise, people turning towards the sound of screams that were far too panicked to be from excitement, and were growing louder. Plumes of smoke were starting to rise over the towers and spires of the rides, thick and black and sulfurous.

“Oh man, I hope nobody’s hurt,” Dipper said, looking back over at his father and his sister. Belle was still peering through the labyrinth of rides, one hand now raised to shield her eyes, but their father wasn’t looking at the smoke or the Ferris wheel, which had thankfully stopped shaking, but had also stopped spinning. Instead, he was looking down at Dipper with a look that Dipper couldn’t read. “Uh…Dad?”

The twins’ father shook his head, giving a rather weak smile. “Sorry. I think we should -“

"Look out!" Belle grabbed Dipper by the collar and dragged him backwards, out of the way, just seconds before one of the bullet-shaped cars from the roller coaster tore out of the sky and slammed into the ground right by where they’d been standing.

Both twins stared, frozen in place, each of them clinging to the other as the dust cleared. Dimly, Dipper realised that people around them were screaming, that there were people running past. He couldn’t bring himself to focus on them, though. He couldn’t focus on anything but the fact that he and Belle had both just nearly been crushed to death.

"Daaaad?" Belle called, over the shouts and shrieks from around them.

"I’m here!" their father’s voice echoed from behind the car. "Are you two all right?"

“We’re fine! We -” Belle stopped in mid-sentence, looking up in the direction that the car had fallen from. Dipper followed her line of sight, fear tying a knot in his chest as he saw what had caught her eye.

Thick, black smoke billowed unnaturally quickly across the sky, blotting out the watery blue overhead, casting a deep shadow over the twins. Red light flickered through it like lightning, bloody and menacing. A deep, echoing rumble, not quite like thunder but close, emanated from the cloud, and a burst of pressure ripped through Dipper’s head at the same time as the red light suddenly condensed into a single bolt, leaping down to strike brilliant crimson flames up from the wrecked roller coaster car.

Belle shrieked. Dipper would have, too, if he hadn’t suddenly felt like his head was trying to turn itself inside out.

Another crackling red bolt blew apart the dirt by his feet, the stench of sulphur and ozone mingling with burnt grass and dirt, and he gasped, jumping backwards and reaching out to grab Belle’s hand. “Run!”

Belle didn’t need to be told twice. The twins dodged around the ticket stand instants before another red blast blew it to smithereens, little shards of flaming wood flying around them. One landed on Dipper’s hat, and Belle patted out the tiny fire it started, looking back over her shoulder at the cloud that had started to billow after them. “What _is_ that?”

"Whatever it is, it’s definitely demonic!" There was a screech of tearing metal, and Belle pulled Dipper to their right, behind a hot-dog cart, out of the way of a carousel horse that ploughed into the dirt right in their path. Three more horses and a bench seat carved to look like a sleigh were all hurled into the ground around them in quick succession, penning them in against the hot-dog cart behind a fence of mangled metal and painted fiberglass. Through the blur of tears that had sprung involuntarily to his eyes from the pain in his head, Dipper squinted up at the cloud that advanced on them. "It looks…like…agh!"

He barely caught a glimpse of a clawed hand forming out of the billows of smoke before gold and black fireworks bloomed across his vision and he doubled over in agony. Faintly, he heard Belle shout something, sounding distant and almost as angry as she did scared. Something seared the side of his face, and he thought he might have screamed, but he couldn’t tell through the constant drumbeat that felt like it was splitting his head like an egg with each throb. It filled the universe, hammering in time with his heartbeat, until there was nothing left but him and the pain that wasn’t even quite pain anymore…

There was a shriek from somewhere overhead, and Dipper’s eyes snapped open almost without his having to think about it, the spots and shocks of colour clearing from his vision and leaving everything in shades of grey but Belle and the thing that had chased them down. It still hovered overhead, crackling in shades of red and orange, sparks skittering off of its claws and between the feathers of its wings and the horns of its bullish face as they formed from and dissolved into the cloud the twins had seen before. A Shedu, Dipper knew without having to think about it, a step up from the weaker Malachor but still nowhere near a threat. And none too happy about being summoned and set on a couple of kids, if the faint tinge of stomach-roiling yellow-gray-green that flickered in and out of its aura could be trusted.

Dipper took this all in at a glance, and promptly dismissed it as irrelevant. Because, in one of its clawed forelegs, the Shedu was holding a little bundle of furious energy flickering with angry reds mixed with terrified blue-greens. A little bundle of furious energy that was shouting, “Leave my bro-bro alone!”

Dipper pushed himself to his feet, and it was strange, he could still feel magic pulsing through him with every kick of his heart, but for the first time since they’d come to Gravity Falls, his head felt perfectly clear. His hands balled into fists as he stared up at the demon overhead, and he had to fight down the urge to reach up and just _crush_ it to dust for daring to lay a finger on _his_ twin, _his_ other half, how _dare_ such a miserable pathetic creature even _dream_ of harming a single hair on her head…

"HEY!"

His shout got the Shedu’s attention. Burning eyes, like embers set into an ash-and-cinder face, turned to face him, narrowed with menacing rage. Whatever it saw, its eyes widened the instant they fell on Dipper, and it froze in midair, its cloudy, nebulous form arrested in mid-shift, its face fixed in an expression of bovine surprise. Dipper might have found it funny, if the demon hadn’t still had Belle gripped in its claw.

"LET GO OF M̵͞͝Y ͏͜S̢͡ĮS̶̵̨T̶̵͜Ę̧͢R̸̢͡ !"

He was half-expecting laughter, refusal, some sort of fight that he wasn’t quite sure why he felt certain he could win. He wasn’t expecting the Shedu to turn and look directly at Belle with its eyes still comically wide, and then to slowly and carefully set her down beside Dipper, the sharp blue-green of her colours fading to a dull pastel of curiosity as it drew back its claws. It paused, once, and reached down again, and Dipper glared at it, but all it did was straighten the bow on top of Belle’s head before dissipating into a dark cloud once again, which billowed up into itself and vanished from sight.

The furious pounding of magic drained away to nothing but the familiar dull background buzz of a headache that had dogged him since their arrival in town, and suddenly Dipper felt as exhausted as if he’d run a marathon after several nights with no sleep, all his energy dissolving like the demon had done. He swayed on his feet, blinking until the world went back to its proper colours, and turned to face Belle, mustering up a grin. “Wow, I didn’t actually think that would _work_.” His throat felt raw and sore, like someone had dragged sandpaper down it, and he winced.

Belle didn’t laugh. She didn’t say anything. She just stared at him like she’d never seen him before.

Dipper swallowed hard, trying not to let the fine tendrils of fear that were starting to worm their way into his exhausted relief show in his voice. “Please tell me it’s not behind me.”

Belle shook her head, slowly. And then, in a voice like a doctor breaking bad news to a patient, she said softly, “Dipper? Um…you’re on fire.”

"What?" Dipper tried to laugh, but it came out sounding strangled and he quickly gave it up, looking down at himself for any sign of flames and wondering why he hadn’t felt anything burning. "Why would I be - oh my god!"

Belle flinched backwards when Dipper threw both arms out in front of himself. Dipper couldn’t really blame her. He kind of wished he could get away from the eerie blue flames that licked over his hands and up his forearms as well.

"Put it out, put it out, put it out!"

Belle swatted at the flames with the sleeves of her sweater as Dipper frantically waved his arms in front of him. The flames, thankfully, didn’t actually _burn_ ; they just tingled, in a not entirely unpleasant way, but somehow that was almost more unnerving than the fact that they were there in the first place. He wasn’t sure what finally put the flames out; one minute, they were just there, and the next, they had vanished, leaving no sign that they’d ever been there at all.

Belle didn’t say anything else for what felt like an eternity, and Dipper was more than happy to follow her lead. Slowly, he caught his breath, avoiding looking in her direction and trying not to hyperventilate or think too hard about what had just happened.

He didn’t realise how scared he’d been that she wouldn’t want to speak to him at all until her hand landed on his shoulder and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Dipper looked up, to see Belle biting her lip, worry clear in her eyes.

"I don’t know what’s going on," he begged, silently cursing the way his voice cracked, before she could ask any of the questions he knew she wanted answers for, questions he wanted answered himself. "What’s _happening_ to me?”

Belle didn’t say anything, just wrapped both arms around Dipper, who buried his face into the slightly scratchy softness of her sweater and squeezed her around her waist so hard that it had to hurt.

They stayed like that, holding onto each other, until their father and the emergency workers found them.


	10. Chapter 10

The town’s little hospital was nearly overflowing after the attack on the amusement park, and it took over an hour of waiting for a harried-looking doctor to briefly look all three Sterlings over, proclaim Belle and Dipper to be perfectly fine and recommend aloe vera for a few shallow burns that their father had got from being too close to the crashed roller coaster car when it caught fire, and send them all home.

Dipper spent the hour in the waiting room sitting with his legs crossed on an uncomfortable metal chair, chewing nervously on the end of his pencil as he stared down at a fresh page in his notebook. Every so often, he stopped gnawing and started to scribble furiously, but everything he wrote down he quickly crossed out again, until the page was nothing but a blur of black marks and smudged graphite.

It didn’t make sense. And it made too much sense. Belle hadn’t been lying when she’d said Dipper was the best in their class at demonology, but even someone who only had a passing familiarity with demons and the way they worked would have been able to recognise the blue flames that had engulfed his arms at the amusement park. Add that to what Belle had said about his eyes turning weird every time something strange had happened, and how he’d _felt_ every time something strange had happened, and there was really only one possible explanation.

But it didn’t make sense. If he was possessed, shouldn’t he be floating around like a ghost right now, watching the demon that had taken over his body do whatever terrible things it was plotting, instead of just getting weird headaches and occasional flashes of déjà vu? And wouldn’t he have had to make some sort of deal for a demon to be able to take over his body? There was no way he could have done that, he passed out just about every time he got anywhere _near_ a summoning circle.

It didn’t make sense.

Belle broke the endless repeating cycle of Dipper’s thoughts with an elbow to the ribs. “Psst. Isn’t that that guy from the pet shop?”

Dipper looked up from the mess of lines and angry scribbles that his carefully organized list had turned into, and followed her pointing finger over to the counter by the nurses’ station. Sure enough, a gangly, straw-haired man with oversized ears was throwing a furtive glance in their direction, his eyes going wide when he saw Dipper and Belle looking at him. He dropped the clipboard he’d been holding, and the person with him, their face shadowed in the depths of a hooded sweatshirt that looked several sizes too big for them, put a hand on his arm, clearly keeping him from running away.

"Yeah, it is," Dipper agreed, in an undertone. "What’s he doing here?"

"Maybe he’s getting a checkup? He did kind of get strangled yesterday."

Thankfully, that was when the nurse called their father’s name.

The car ride back to the hotel was tense, their father shushing the twins and turning the radio up every time a news report to do with the attack at the amusement park came on, which was often, though it never said anything Dipper didn’t already know. Their father kept looking back at them in the rearview mirror, asking how they were doing every time a report finished, until Belle said, “Dad, even the _doctor_ said we’re fine.”

Their father let out a long sigh, meeting her gaze in the mirror. “I know. I just - I just worry. You are so important to me, you know that.” He paused for a fraction of a second too long before adding, “ _Both_ of you.”

Dipper turned to stare out of the window, resting his elbow on the armrest and his chin on his hand, and didn’t look back until they pulled into the parking lot outside the hotel.

Belle tried to say something to him as they climbed the stairs to the hotel door, but he didn’t hear it, grinding his teeth together and hurrying up the last few stairs to push through the door before her. Through the jangle of the chimes above the door, he heard their father asking Alice, “Any messages for me?”

"Nah," Alice answered, looking up over her magazine, meeting Dipper’s eyes with a pointed waggle of her eyebrows. "Sorry, I don’t have _anything_ _for you_.”

Dipper threw open his arms in disbelief, and Alice winced, shooting him an apologetic grin. He only just resisted the urge to complain, “But we had a _deal!_ " and even then, it was only because he realised, with a sudden chill down his spine, just what that would make him sound like.

"All right," the twins’ father said, glancing over at Dipper and Belle coming up beside him, then back to Alice, with a curious expression on his face. "Well, thank you anyway -"

"Oh, wait! Actually, there _was_ one thing I had to tell you.” Alice held up a finger, stopping the twins’ father in his tracks. “Uncle Mike wanted to invite all of you guys over to the Library for dinner tonight. Said he had something he wanted to talk to you about.”

There was a short silence, ringing like a cathedral.

"Ah," the twins’ father said, carefully. "Right. What time?"

"Uh, they usually eat around six," Alice answered, a hint of a question in her voice.

"And did it have to be at the Library? My s- Dipper’s very sensitive to strong magic, and last time -"

"I’ll be fine," Dipper interrupted, staring at the toes of his shoes. He’d barely felt a twinge of pain passing back through the wall coming back from the amusement park, just the same strange clearheadedness and flood of magic that he’d felt facing down the Shedu, although everything _had_ flickered momentarily into aura colours against black and white. He didn’t really want to think about why.

Uncharacteristically, their father didn’t push it. “Well, if you say so. We can always decline if you end up feeling differently.” He nodded to Alice. “Six o’clock, then. We’ll be there.”

“Cool,” Alice said, cocking an eyebrow in Dipper’s direction, clearly dying to ask what was going on. Dipper ignored the unspoken question, trudging after his father to the elevators.

Belle caught his arm before he got too far ahead, though, squeezing painfully when he tried to pull away. “Are we still doing the plan?” she whispered, and Dipper sighed.

"I don’t know. There’s not much point if the journal isn’t here -"

"Hey!"

Both twins turned at the sound of Alice’s stage-whisper, to see her waving them over to the reception desk. Belle cocked an eyebrow at Dipper, holding out both hands at her sides, palms up, in a silent question.

Dipper sighed. “Sure. Initiate step three: stall.”

An enormous grin blossomed across Belle’s face, and she ran over to join their father at the elevator. “Hey, Dad, guess what! The other day, when we were at the pet shop -“

"Oh no. Belle, what kind of creature did you fall in love with _this_ time?”

Dipper checked once to make sure that their father was suitably engrossed in talking Belle down from adopting a teacup griffin not to notice that his son hadn’t caught up yet, before hurrying over to the reception desk. “What is it?”

Alice’s eyes flicked over to the elevators and back to Dipper. She was practically vibrating with excitement as she asked, in a hush, “Why didn’t you _tell_ me that the book you wanted was Stanley Pines’ missing journal? How did _your_ dad end up with it, anyway?”

"I don’t…actually…know," Dipper answered, honestly, trying not to look over at the elevators himself. "What was the problem, why couldn’t you get it?"

Alice gave him a look like he’d just asked why she couldn’t make the sun come up in the west. “Are you serious? Dude, Uncle Mike has that thing under lock and key. It’s already been stolen once, he’s not taking any chances on it disappearing again on his watch. Which miiiiight be why I suggested he should invite you guys along for dinner if he wanted your dad to come by the Library. Sorry, I totally forgot about the magic-sensitivity thing.”

"It’s fine," Dipper quickly reassured her. "I don’t think that’s going to be a problem."

"Okay, good." Alice reached into her enormous black bag, fished around for a few seconds, and then drew out a heavy, old-looking silver key. "This’ll get you into Uncle Mike’s top desk drawer, out in the Library. He keeps the combination for the safe taped to the back of the drawer. The journal’s in the safe. I can probably keep the adults busy for a while so you and your sister can slip off, but other than that, you’re on your own." She winked hugely and added, in a terrible fake British accent, "Good luck, Mr. Bond."

Dipper took the key carefully, biting his bottom lip to keep it from quivering. He stared at it for a long moment, before glancing up at Alice. “Thank you. You really didn’t have to do any of this.”

Alice shrugged. “Yeah, I know I didn’t, but I wanted to.”

"Why?" Dipper tried very hard to pretend that his voice hadn’t squeaked embarrassingly at the end of the word. "You don’t even know us."

Alice cocked her head to one side, and gave him the most searching, serious look he’d ever seen her wear. “Noo-o-o,” she said, at last, just when Dipper was starting to shift uncomfortably, “but it’s the weirdest thing. I just feel like I can trust you, y’know?”

"…Yeah," Dipper agreed, after a moment’s thought. "Yeah, I do know."

Alice nodded, and just like that, the serious moment was over. “Plus, everybody loves a mystery. ‘specially one that involves breaking and entering.” She sat back, kicking her feet up onto the desk and pulling a fashion magazine from her bag. “Make sure you tell me all about whatever you find in that journal! Oh, and if you get caught with that key, you didn’t get it from me. Don’t need another charge of petty larceny on my record.”

Dipper slipped the key into his pocket, where it sat, heavy and cold. “Thanks.”

Alice just waved him towards the elevators, hiding a small smile behind her magazine.

…

The key stayed heavy and cold in Dipper’s pocket all the way down the winding, heavily forested road leading to the Stanley Pines Memorial Library of the Supernatural, never really warming up or getting any less weighty. In a way, its constant, undeniable presence was nice, like a little anchor, keeping Dipper’s head from whirling right off his shoulders as they drew closer to the Library, the place where everything had started, and where, he hoped, he’d find the answers he needed.

He didn’t notice how worked up he was getting worrying about what he might find, or how strong the magical saturation around them had grown, until Belle took precious time out of sulking about their father turning down her heartfelt pleas to adopt the teacup griffin to quietly point out that the tips of three of Dipper’s fingers were on fire. Luckily, the blue fire didn’t catch on Dipper’s shorts when he hastily stuffed his hand into his pocket, with a quick glance up at the front to see if his father had noticed anything. Unluckily, the flames didn’t seem to need oxygen to keep burning; when Dipper dared to sneak a peek several minutes later, only one of the tiny flames had gone out, the other two twinkling merrily and casting eerie shadows through the fabric.

Thankfully, the flames had gone out by the time they pulled up behind the rambling old building. For a moment, just as they pulled through the trees, Dipper had a sudden flash of – _something_ , like déjà vu but not at all like it at the same time. He knew, even though he’d never been there before, exactly what he’d see when the car pulled into the bare patch of gravel that served as a parking lot.

The feeling was so clear and so overwhelming that Dipper didn’t see what was actually there for several seconds, and when he did, he felt strangely cheated. The Stanley Pines Memorial Library of the Supernatural was, without a doubt, an impressive building, tall and sturdy and elegant in a quiet, unassuming way, with wings clearly added on as the Library had grown in both importance and reputation and need for storage space. But though it still gave off an aura of impossible familiarity, it just wasn’t _right_. Dipper caught himself looking for things that weren’t there, for a weathervane spinning a curious legend against the early-evening sky, missing shingles like gaps in a toothless smile, weatherbeaten boards and doors angled off of square by years of settling and incongruously elaborate windows and a massive sign, perched atop the roof, denuded of a key letter, welcoming one and all to -

“Hey, you made it!” Alice waved from the porch, leaning out of the screen door. “ _Finally!_ Get in here before I forget to be polite and just start shoveling enchiladas into my face.”


	11. Chapter 11

Alice’s Uncle Mike turned out to be not all that much older than she was, with an offbeat sense of humour and a tendency to spout interesting, if mostly irrelevant, facts about the supernatural without warning. And although he couldn’t have looked more different from Alice, dark where she was pale and with thick, tightly-curled dark hair to her waist-length flaming red, they were unmistakably related, with matching freckles and bright green eyes and the same lazy, almost secretive smile. 

No one talked much over dinner, except about how good the food was and what Mike had done all day, which led to Alice telling an involved story about hunting down a bookworm that had once eaten its way through a few spellbooks and had started leaving a trail of misdirected, half-finished magic in its wake as it gnawed through the Library’s stacks.

"…and then, just when we thought we’d trapped it -" Alice said, waving one arm expansively, and Mike interrupted, pointing at her.

“ _She_ starts shouting at the poor creature, something about ‘who’s the freakishly intelligent one _now_ ’, and right in the middle of her rant the spellbook she’s holding suddenly starts wriggling!”

Alice slumped back in her chair with a groan, throwing her head back to stare up at the ceiling. “Stupid thing had laid eggs all through the binding, and they all hatched at once. It was a _nightmare_ trying to clean it all up.”

"Anyway, that’s the last time Alice ever bragged about her superior intelligence to a magical creature." Mike laughed, reaching across the table to snag the pitcher of juice that sat in the centre. "Anybody want something to drink? Anything more to eat?"

"What happened to the bookworms?" Belle asked, holding out her glass. Alice and Mike shared a look, and both burst out laughing.

"They’re still there," Alice admitted, finally, with an apologetic grin. "Turns out they knew the library catalogue better than either of us."

"Yeah, we keep them fed on discards from the regular library and out-of-date demonology textbooks." Mike’s grin was very white and just a little bit mischievous. "That one was Alice’s idea."

"Hey, you can’t just throw those books out or recycle them, who knows what might happen? Same goes for burning. This way, the books get disposed of safely, and the bookworms get their fill of both paper and randomized magic."

“ _And_ we get paid for safe disposal services, _and_ save on librarians,” Mike reminded her gently, and Alice shrugged.

"So sue me for having a good head for business." She took a delicate sip of her juice. "Somebody in this family has to. Hey, speaking of business, didn’t you have something you wanted to talk to Mr. Sterling about?"

Mike’s smile froze in place. It was only for a fraction of a second before he started talking again, sounding almost the same as he had before Alice had mentioned business, but for that fraction of a second, he looked downright terrified. “Oh! Yeah, definitely, but that can wait until we’re done eating.”

"Well, I’m done, and it looks like everybody else is too," Alice said, gesturing with one arm towards the empty plates around the table. "Me and the squirts could start cleaning up if you two want to go talk in the office or something."

"Oh no, you don’t have to -" Mike started, but the twins’ father cut him off.

"Actually, if you two wouldn’t mind…" He looked pointedly at Belle, who sighed and took a huge gulp of her juice.

"Ugh, _fine_ ,” she sighed, and then, in a mutter that everyone at the table could hear clearly, “So I’m responsible enough to clean up at somebody else’s house but not to take care of _my own pet_ …”

"All right then. Whenever you’re ready," Mike said, and then, "Thank you!" with a nervous grin in Dipper’s direction.

Dipper barely noticed. He was preoccupied with hiding the blue and gold sparks that had started to skip between his fingers under the table.

Alice started to clear away the dirty dishes as Mike and the twins’ father got up and left the room. She dropped the dishes in the sink and turned on the water, standing and watching the door the adults had left by while the sink filled up with mounds of bubbles. When Belle dropped her now-empty glass  on the counter beside her, she jumped, and then laughed, but kept her eyes fixed on the door.

"You two should get out of here now," Alice said quietly, the running water almost loud enough to cover her words. "I don’t know how long they’ll be in there, but Mike loves to talk almost as much as he loves pointless supernatural trivia so I’m guessing they’ll be a while."

Dipper slipped down from his chair, sliding his hands into his pockets both to hide the sparks that he hadn’t been able to stop and to take hold of the key, still cool and heavy against his palm. “Which way is the Library?”

Alice pointed to the door, flicking bubbles to the floor. “Hang a left on the way out and you should see a hallway with a steel door at the end. That’ll let you into the back room, and then out into the Library. You’ll have to go past Mike’s office to get to the door, though, so be careful.” She pushed her hair back behind one ear. “I’d tell you to go around outside instead, but then you’d have to go right by the office window, which would be worse. And besides, the inside door’s the only one that’s not locked.”

"Thank you," Dipper said, and the look that Belle gave him said that it had been a very grim-sounding thanks.

"Don’t mention it." Alice plunged her hands into the sink, and then added, almost as an afterthought, "Seriously, don’t mention it. If Uncle Mike finds out I’m sneaking kids into the Library after hours, I can kiss living here rent-free goodbye."

Dipper, barely listening, turned and headed for the kitchen door. Belle shrugged, and followed.

In Dipper’s pocket, sparks crackled off of his fist, curled around the key.

…

Sneaking past the office proved easier than Alice had made it sound; the door was solid wood, and though Dipper could faintly make out the muffled sounds of conversation through it, could tell that Mike was talking and sounded worried about something, he couldn’t make out any of the words. He and Belle slipped past the door without hearing Mike so much as pause for breath.

Getting through the door to the Library without being noticed, though, was a little bit harder.

At first, Dipper thought the door was locked, the handle refusing to turn. Belle, quickly growing fed up with his muttering about application of force and angle of leverage, pushed him out of the way and threw her whole weight on the handle with a loud grunt. The handle turned with a noise of protesting metal and the door swung slowly open, carrying Belle, still dangling from the handle by both hands, with it.

The noise of conversation from behind the office door stopped completely.

Dipper sucked in a breath and held it, clapping a hand over Belle’s mouth just in case and quickly yanking it away when something wet and slimy dragged across his palm. “Did you seriously just _lick_ me?” he whispered, and Belle stuck out her tongue triumphantly.

Thankfully, after what felt like a silent, tense eternity, the voices from the office started their quiet murmuring again. Dipper let out a long sigh of relief, and Belle swung down from the handle, pushing the door open wider. They both slipped through into the velvety dark on the other side and Dipper pulled the door shut behind them, wincing when it settled into place with a deep, echoing thump. He couldn’t hear anything through the steel door, but that just meant that, if Mike or their father had noticed the noise, the twins wouldn’t know until someone came to investigate.

They’d just have to be quick, then.

There was a thunk and a clatter, and then a single fluorescent light flickered into weak, watery life overhead, revealing Belle lying on top of a crumpled set of wire shelves directly below the lightswitch beside the door. Dipper helped her up, and she brushed herself off, her face falling when she found a snagged thread in the sleeve of her sweater. “Aw, _man_!”

"Shhh!" Dipper held a finger to his lips, pointing towards the door at the other end of the room. Belle looked like she was about to say something more, but a thump from somewhere on the other side of the steel door made her jump. She met Dipper’s eyes, and without a word, they both dashed across the room to the other door. Thankfully, it opened much more easily than the steel door had, and they hurried through, Belle leaning back to shut off the light behind them.

The Library was dark, the only illumination coming from a glaring EXIT sign over the door behind them that spilled ominous red light over them both and dimly showed that they’d come out behind a massive curved desk.

“Top desk drawer,” Dipper muttered to himself, trying to remember Alice’s instructions. “ _Which_ top desk drawer?”

"Maybe try the one with a lock on it?"

"They _all_ have locks on them!”

"Well, I don’t know!" Belle shut her eyes and pointed towards the desk. "Try that one."

They ended up trying four drawers before they found, stuck to the very back of a drawer with a piece of yellowing tape, a deeply creased piece of paper with a string of numbers written across it, barely visible in the dim red glow from the EXIT sign. Dipper squinted at the paper, trying to make the numbers out, only to be nearly blinded when a bright light suddenly flashed on right in front of him. “Ow! Belle, what are you _doing_?”

Belle laughed. “Turning on a lamp, silly. It’s easier to read when you can actually _see_. Oh hey, look, the safe’s right here under the desk!”

Dipper knelt down by the safe, motioning to Belle to move the lamp to give him more light as he carefully spun the dial. It took a few tries, but finally, the lock gave a quiet click and the door swung smoothly open.

There were a handful of books sitting in the bottom of the safe, standing with their spines facing out beside stacked cash register drawers. Dipper didn’t notice or care if there was anything else in the safe. All his attention was fixed on the worn red leather binding of a book he was somehow certain was the one he was looking for.

He reached out, and pulled it out of the safe.

The instant he touched the journal, a shiver ran up Dipper’s spine, and he could feel every hair stand on end like the time they’d visited the science centre and he’d got to try putting his hand on a Van de Graaff generator. Everything _tingled_ , and he didn’t have to see the sudden flicker of blue light on the walls of the safe in front of him to know that his fingertips weren’t the only parts of him throwing off blue and gold sparks. It passed after a moment, the sparks dying out into darkness and the hair settling back into place along the back of his neck, but the feeling of being _charged_ somehow didn’t go away.

"C’mon," Dipper said, ignoring the wide-eyed stare Belle was giving him. "Let’s see what the journal has to say.”

They spread it out on the desk in front of them, directly under the reading lamp. Dipper had to pause for a breath before opening the cover, steeling himself for what he might find. The bronze plate in the shape of a six-fingered hand on the front almost seemed to wink at him in the light, like an old friend, and the magnitude of what he was about to do hit him like a freight train. Whatever was being hidden from him, he was about to - literally - bring it into the light, and suddenly, he didn’t know if he wanted to. What if the answers he got were worse than not knowing? What if it only proved that there really _was_ something horrifically wrong with him? What if -

A hand wrapped around his, warm and reassuring, and Dipper looked up to see Belle giving him a small smile. She gave his hand a squeeze, and he found himself giving her a shaky smile in return. “Together?”

Dipper took another deep breath before answering. “On three. One, two…three!”

Together, they opened the journal.


	12. Chapter 12

After everything they’d done to get their hands on the journal, Dipper had been expecting a lot more from its contents - some kind of huge revelation, maybe on the first page, maybe even something magical that would happen when he finally opened it. He wasn’t expecting page after page of messy notes on magical creatures and ‘secrets’ that had been widely known since the Transcendence. The vague warnings about a demon made his heart jump into his throat, but it turned out to be about Bill Cipher, who was definitely dead and had been since the Transcendence.

"I don’t get it," Belle groaned, at last, slumping down over the desk. "I don’t know why you thought this was so important. There’s nothing _here_!”

Dipper flipped another page, shaking his head. “The answers _hav_ _e_ to be here. There has to be _somethin_ _g_ -“

He stopped in the middle of his sentence, staring at the page in front of him. The handwriting that covered it was different from all the pages before.

"Maybe we should just go back before Dad notices we’re not -"

"Wait." Dipper scanned the page, his eyes going wide. "Belle, you have to have a look at this."

Belle raised her head with another groan, and slid along the polished surface of the desk until her shoulder bumped against Dipper’s, peering down at the page. “What’s - _oh_. Ohhhhh.”

Glaring up at them from the page, inked in blue in messy, rounded lettering, was the name “Dipper Pines”.

Dipper looked up, meeting Belle’s eyes. Without a word, they both turned back to the journal, Dipper carefully turning over the page. Scribbly doodles of pine trees and the words “What is the MYSTERY SHACK?”, enclosed in a box that a little more reading revealed to be a drawing of a bumper sticker that had apparently been common once, practically leapt off of the page at them.

“It was _real_ ,” Belle breathed, quickly scanning the page of handwriting. “I thought you made it up.”

“This was written in _2012_ ,” Dipper said, noticing the date at the top of the page. “How – I didn’t know about _any_ of this stuff, how could I have…”

He flipped the page over again, ignoring Belle’s protest that she wasn’t done reading. There were entries for nearly every day of June, Dipper Pines and his twin sister Mabel apparently having got tangled up in a different supernatural misadventure for nearly every day of the week. The entries started to get sparser - and weirder - as the summer went on, and then, without warning, they stopped altogether. Dipper flipped forward, but there were just several pages of loopy, cheerful handwriting in purple glitter gel pen, and then what looked like a scrapbook spread across two pages, with faded, yellowed pictures held in place by googly-eyed stickers and glittery puff paint.

"What?" Dipper asked, aloud, not really expecting an answer. "He was so close to something big! Why’d he just stop?”

Belle leaned in, peering at one of the photos glued down in the scrapbook spread. “Hey, that looks like -”

She stopped short, and Dipper waited for her to finish her sentence, but she didn’t say anything more. When she looked up, she was white as a sheet, without even a hint of a smile on her face.

"What?" Dipper repeated, and Belle just pointed down at the picture. He leaned closer, trying to make out what the picture was meant to show. It was hard to tell, in the dim light, but it looked like a dark-haired girl about their age, grinning hugely with a mouth full of metal and two fingers held up in a peace sign by her face. "Huh, wow, she does look kind of like you -"

"Not her," Belle said, and Dipper looked up at her, a little worried. “Dippingsauce…it’s _you_.”

She sounded _scared_ , but Dipper didn’t see anything to be scared _of_. It was just an old snapshot of a girl and - and there was a boy in the picture, too, behind the girl, looking at the camera with his mouth open and his eyebrows furrowed like he’d been caught in the middle of shouting something.

Dipper leaned in to look a little closer, looking for whatever had scared Belle so badly, but there was nothing. Just the girl, grinning for all she was worth, and the boy, who did look uncannily like him now that Dipper was looking for it, blurred slightly with motion, his eyes -

_His eye_ _s_.

Fixed on the camera in an outraged glare, they were dark under the brim of his blue and white cap (Dipper reached up without realising to touch his own hat), blurred just enough that it wasn’t obvious at once that it wasn’t a trick of the light or the way the photograph had faded, but that they were _black_ , completely, with irises that glowed gold. And up in one corner of the photograph, reaching up for the camera, easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it, his right hand was trailing blue flames.

Dipper sucked in a sharp breath. “What…?”

He looked over the pictures again, this time more carefully, now that he knew what he was looking for. The boy who looked like him was in most of them, hiding his face or looking angry at being caught on camera in some of them, smiling grudgingly or even genuinely in others, sometimes wearing the blue and white cap and a vest and t-shirt that looked an awful lot like Dipper’s usual clothes, sometimes in a smart black suit with a miniature top hat hovering just above the crown of his head. Sometimes his smile showed fangs, sometimes he was holding a handful of blue flames, sometimes he was hovering several feet off the ground to pose with the girl with the enormous smile. But always, always, his eyes stayed black and gold.

"Remember I said your eyes went all weird?" Belle said, quietly.

The longer Dipper looked, the more those eyes seemed to look directly at him, or through him, dizzyingly familiar and challenging and - and _impossible_. He shook his head, trying to clear it as much as trying to deny what he was seeing.

"No, that can’t be - no." He wrenched the page over, hiding the photographs with their incongruous glittering surroundings, flipping back to the first of the journal entries written in sparkly purple ink in yet another hand, round and broad and expansive, with hearts dotting the ‘i’s. Dipper scanned over it in a hurry, but fragments of a few sentences still leapt out and embedded themselves into his memory.

_…since we stopped Bill, but Dipper’s still invisible to everybody else…_

_… ghost…still can’t touch… I’m writing for him…_

_…Mom and Dad called and he blew out every lightbulb in the Shack…_

_…blue flames…_

Dipper turned the page over, flipping quickly past more pages in the same purple glitter pen, too scared to really read it but unable to look away. The handwriting was more and more familiar with every passing page, until he could almost hear Mabel’s voice reading aloud the few words he caught as he turned over the pages.

_…decided this morning that ‘Dipper’ isn’t a cool enough name for a demon –_

Without warning, images unspooled around him, pulling him out of the Library and into the shadow of a memory. Phantom pain shot through him, and he reeled, the echoes of long-ago screams filling his head.

“Dipper!”

Belle’s voice yanked Dipper abruptly back into the present. He dropped the journal and took one stumbling step back, letting it fall open at random. He caught a glimpse of more sparkly puff paint and what looked like it must be another photograph, but quickly looked away, meeting his sister’s eyes.

Slowly and carefully, Belle said “I think you’re shaking the shelves.”

It took a moment for the low rumbling from all around them to register. Dipper looked out at the Library beyond the desk, and sure enough, there was movement out among the stacks, the books rattling against their shelves. The desk drawers were all tugging against their locks under his hands, clattering in and out as far as they could go, and the light from the reading lamp strobed wildly as it shook in place.

“No,” Dipper said, only for some reason it came out as a whisper, and he had to repeat it, louder and with more force, the rumbling from the shelves growing in an echo of his voice. “No, that’s not – that can’t be _me_.”

“Dipper -”

“N̷̴̢̛͜O̧̡!͡͡”

Belle froze with one arm outstretched towards him, her eyes widening as she drew it back. Dipper froze in place, too, a wave of guilt and horror crashing over him when he reached out to take her arm and she flinched. “I’m sorry,” he said, pulling his hand back and balling it into a fist at his side. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to -”

There was a squeak of metal from behind them, and both twins spun to see the door to the storage room swinging open to reveal their father, with Mike close behind. Almost instantly, the rumblings and rattlings from the bookshelves and the desk cut off, leaving a hollow, sucking silence in their wake, a silence that no one dared to break.

In the now-steady light from the reading lamp, Dipper saw their father’s eyes flick down to the journal lying accusingly open on the desk, and back up to Dipper’s face, the lines around his eyes settling into something sad and a little bit frightened without his expression even changing. Somehow, that tiny, almost microscopic shift in his expression made it all real in a way that the photographs and the journal entries hadn’t, and Dipper felt his chest tighten until it was hard to breathe. 

“You knew,” he said into the waiting silence, and the words that might have been an accusation came out sounding flat and indisputable. “You knew that I’m – that I’m a – a -”

Their father stared down towards his own feet, not meeting Dipper’s eyes. Questions flooded into Dipper’s head, so thick and fast that he didn’t know where to start. Dimly, through the roar of the silence in his ears and the rush of magic through his veins, he noticed that his fingertips had started to spark again, throwing little showers of blue and gold to the floor.

At last, his father raised his head, finally meeting Dipper’s eyes. “I am so, so sorry -“

The bookshelves exploded.

Rare and magical and mundane books all flew forcefully from their shelves, colliding in midair and collapsing into heaped piles of crumpled pages and broken spines. The air was filled with paper projectiles, settling into heavy drifts along the bottoms of the now-empty shelves. Belle’s startled yell was nearly drowned out in the thunderous roar of falling books, which died away slowly, leaving Dipper suddenly feeling very small and very alone with three pairs of wide, staring eyes fixed on him in something very close to terror.

He did the only thing he could think of.

In the stunned silence following the book-avalanche, the thump of his feet on the carpeted floor sounded unusually loud as he turned and ran for the dim red glow of the EXIT sign on the far wall. He didn’t stop for the heavy double doors leading outside, throwing them wide open and ignoring the blaring alarm that shrieked into life in his wake. The evening air was a shock of cold on his bare arms and legs as he ran away from the Sha- no, the _Library_ , as fast as he could.

He didn’t look back.

…

Dipper didn’t slow down until he couldn’t see the Library through the trees anymore. Then, he let his steps gradually slow, until he was wandering aimlessly, rubbing his arms as he realised just how cold it was starting to get as the sun dipped below the horizon. The trees cast weird shadows, long and dark in the honeyed light, and something ran rustling and shrieking through the treetops, sending a shiver down Dipper’s spine. It was a little late to remember just where he was and what sort of things lived there, though. He couldn’t go back yet, even if he didn’t really know where else to go.

And besides, he was probably the scariest thing in the woods, anyway.

The thought brought a grim smile to his face, and his shoulders shook with something that might have been either a sob or laughter, even he wasn’t sure. It was just - _hilarious_! The whole mess was absolutely _ridiculous_ and impossible and - and _actually happening_ , and suddenly it didn’t seem very funny anymore.

Dipper stopped, leaning back against a tree with a sigh and letting himself slide down the trunk until he was sitting on the ground. He wrapped both arms around his knees, tucked against his chest, and tried not to think.

"Dipperrrrrrr!"

Dipper looked up at the sound of Belle’s call, surprisingly close. He listened, holding as still as he could, as the sound of footsteps on rough ground and the occasional rustle or snap of a branch came nearer and nearer.

"Come on, Dippingdots, you can’t stay out here all night!" Belle stepped around a tree, looking around for a moment before she spotted Dipper at the base of a tree. "What’re you doing down _there_?”

"Sulking," Dipper answered, truthfully, mumbling into his arms. "Go away."

"Not a chance." Belle walked over and plopped down in front of him, crossing her legs so they resembled a pretzel and resting her elbows on her knees, leaning over to put her chin in her hands. "I’m going to sit right here until you tell me what’s bothering you, no matter how long it takes. So you might as well start talking."

Despite himself, Dipper managed a small smile. “I thought I couldn’t stay out here all night?”

Belle waved a hand dismissively. “Then you’d better start _now_.”

Dipper shook his head, pressing a hand to his forehead. “How - how are you not even a little bit bothered? We just found a book that as good as told us I’m a _demon_ in disguise! I nearly buried you in flying books, and I didn’t even mean to! How are you not running away screaming right now?”

Belle cocked her head to one side, her hair dragging through the carpet of twigs and pine needles underfoot. “Do you _want_ me to?”

"Wh- no!"

"Then there you go." Belle sat back, proudly, as though she’d just solved world hunger or something equally momentous. "Of _course_ I’m not scared of you, you dork. I’ve been your _sister_ for twelve years. It’s kind of hard to be scared of someone when you’ve caught them singing along to top 40 hits with a hairbrush microphone.”

"Hey, they’re _catchy_ ,” Dipper protested, but he couldn’t help the small smile that returned in force. Belle grinned back, straightening up and pushing herself to her feet.

"Come on back, everybody’s worried. We’ll have some hot chocolate and we can talk about it, okay? Dad wants to tell us all about what he and that guy Mike found out. He says since we figured it out ourselves anyway, we might as well have the whole story."

"Ugh, _fine_ ,” Dipper said, with a grin to show he didn’t mean it. That grin slipped, though, as Belle’s words sunk in. “So by ‘whole story’, you mean he’s gonna tell us why I’m - why I’m like this?”

Belle shrugged. “I guess?”

"Do you think -" Dipper had to stop and swallow hard, his throat suddenly, strangely dry. "Do you think, maybe, they might know how to make me - not like this?"

Belle opened her mouth like she was about to say something, and then shut it again, giving her brother a sad smile that looked far too old for her face. She didn’t say anything for a long moment, biting her lip, before she finally reached out a hand. “I dunno. Come on and we’ll find out.”

"Wait." Dipper pushed himself up, looking around. "Did you hear something?"

"No, what?"

"Shh!"

It took a moment for Dipper to figure out what he was hearing - or, rather, _wasn’t_ hearing. All the rustling and cooing and muttering and occasional screaming of the forest and its inhabitants going about their business had stopped, an eerie hush settling over the trees.

"What -" Dipper started to ask, and Belle, behind him, gave a choked scream, abruptly muffled. He spun around, to see her eyes wide and frightened over a hand clapped over her mouth.

The blade of the knife that the robed and hooded figure holding her had pressed against her neck glinted wickedly in the dying sunlight.

Before Dipper could do anything but stare in horror, five more figures in long, deep red robes with hoods up to conceal their faces stepped out from behind trees and out of the underbrush, forming a rough circle around the twins. Dipper looked around for a way out, but even if he’d been able to get Belle away from the person holding her - who, despite the heavy shadows from the hood obscuring their face, still managed to look deeply unimpressed by the way she was kicking at their legs - they were still surrounded, by adults, no less.

Suddenly, and for the first time, Dipper really wished he knew how he’d made the bookshelves explode.

"That knife is made with pure silver, blessed by members of the holy orders of twelve different religions, with a rowan wood handle, and I personally bathed it three times in holy water before we left," a deep, unpleasant voice droned from directly behind Dipper, sounding entirely too proud of itself. "Of course, that won’t stop _you_ for long, o most mighty one, but it should frustrate your powers for at least long enough for my associate here to slit her throat.”

Belle abruptly stopped kicking. Dipper started to turn to face the speaker, but two hooded figures stepped forward, each roughly grabbing one of his arms. He tried to wriggle free, but the droning voice said, from behind him, “If you don’t want to see her hurt, then I suggest you cooperate.”

Dipper froze, looking up to meet Belle’s eyes. He was sure that he looked as terrified to her as she did to him.

"You’ll thank me for this," the droning voice said, and then something heavy hit Dipper squarely on the back of the head. He saw stars, and then, he saw nothing at all.


	13. Chapter 13

The first thing that greeted Dipper on his return to consciousness was a strong smell of smoke and hot wax. The second thing was a sharp, splitting headache, starting at the back of his head where he’d been hit. He reached up to gingerly touch it, wincing at the stab of pain that shot through his skull when his fingers brushed the massive lump that had formed there, and sat up, looking around.

He was in a cage.

An actual, literal _cage_.

“This seems excessive,” Dipper commented, to no one in particular, peering out past the bars. The smell of smoke was instantly explained – the cavernous room he’d found himself in was dark, illuminated only by a ring of bone-white tapered candles surrounding the cage. Around the outside of the ring, the hooded figures had arranged themselves, facing in towards the cage and – and the intricate patterns drawn in red chalk on the floor. With a sudden sinking feeling, Dipper caught sight of the runes for binding and breaking, written in a circle around something that might have been an arrowhead – or might have been a pine tree.

There was no sign of Belle.

"At last!” The same deep, droning voice from before came from the hooded figure at the foot of the circle, a hint of excitement colouring its dull tones. “Now that you’ve awakened, we can begin.”

“Begin what? Where’s my sister?” Dipper demanded, looking around him at the symbols drawn around the perimeter of the circle on the floor and oh, this was _not_ good, these were all _Alcor’s_ symbols, this was _really not good at all_. “Look, uh, if you’re thinking about using me as some kind of human sacrifice…you should probably know that I’m…” He took a deep breath, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m not…actually…human.”

He wasn’t expecting a low murmur of laughter to well up from around the outside of the circle. “Hey, I’m _not_!” he protested, only for the laughter to grow louder. “Look, I am a _very terrifying_ demon in human form who can probably, I don’t know, devour your souls or something, so would you _stop laughing_!”

Silence fell, with a few scattered snickers interspersed. Dipper glared around the circle, crossing his arms over his chest.

And then the figure with the droning voice folded back its hood, revealing a thin face and a smile that bordered on cruel. “We know,” he said, with a nod of acknowledgement in Dipper’s direction.

“Wait, you _know_? How -” Dipper started, and then stopped, as the other figures began to put their hoods down. Most of them were faces he didn’t recognize but who looked familiar, people he thought maybe he’d seen around town once or twice, but there was one with sandy, straw-like hair and oversized ears who he recognized instantly. “ _You_! Is _this_ why you’ve been spying on us?”

“We’ve all been watching you,” the man with the droning voice said, the faintest hint of smugness in his voice. “Ever since you arrived. We’ve been waiting for this for over a decade. We knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away for too long, even enslaved as you are. But we had to be sure. So we watched you.” His smile grew, curling up into his thin cheeks, the light from the candles below casting hollow shadows over his face. “And we tested you.”

“Tested – wait, _you_ sent the Shedu, didn’t you?” Dimly, Dipper remembered thinking, through the intoxicating feeling of power and rage pouring through him, that the demon had been unhappy about being summoned and set on a couple of children. “Are you _nuts_? You could have killed us!”

“Not if you were who we know you are,” the thin-faced man countered, swiftly. “ _You_ were never in any danger from a lowly creature like _that_.”

“And what if I hadn’t been – whoever you think I am?” Dipper demanded, wishing there was enough room in this stupid cage to stand up. Glowering at people didn’t work so well when you were sitting on the floor.

The candlelight glinted menacingly off of the thin-faced man’s eyes as he said, “Then it wouldn’t have mattered what happened to you, would it?”

Dipper opened his mouth, and shut it again. There was no way he could respond to that level of crazy, and a chill was seeping through him that had nothing to do with the cold metal of the cage under him. If this guy cared that little about human life –

“Where’s my sister?” he asked, again. “What did you do with her?”

The thin-faced man’s upper lip curled into a sneer. “You have sunk so low, o most mighty one.”

“Excuse me?”

“How have you let these pathetic mortals bewitch and bind you like this?” The man shook his head sadly. “I thought at first perhaps you were only wearing that form as a disguise, but no. They’ve done something to weaken you, to make you soft, to make you  _care_.”

“They’re my _family_ ,” Dipper said, swallowing down a knot of chilly foreboding. “Of _course_ I care.”

The thin-faced man gave him a tight-lipped grin, humourless and taut. “Of course.”

He reached out one hand, and snapped his fingers, the sound cracking like a gunshot in the quiet of the room. There was a creak of a door opening somewhere in the dark beyond the circle, a scuffling sound and several muffled grunts, and another robed figure dragged Belle into the firelight and threw her down at the edge of the circle.

“Belle!” Dipper threw himself forward at the bars of the cage, forgetting for a second that he was imprisoned. Thankfully, Belle didn’t look hurt, but her hands and feet were both bound, and her eyes were blazing with mingled terror and fury above the strip of silvery duct tape covering her mouth.

A cold fist bunched up around Dipper’s insides, an icy rage that was, by now, getting to be all too familiar welling up and filling his chest, pounding in his head like a heartbeat. He saw Belle’s eyes widen, and knew that his own eyes must have changed again. He shot her a grin that he hoped was reassuring, before turning a glare on the thin-faced man, for the first time welcoming the rush of power and fury coursing through him.

His voice echoed slightly in the hush that fell over the hall. “Let her g͘͢o͏̸̢.̵͞͝”

A few of the robed figures around the circle flinched, or began to whisper to their neighbours, and the gangly, straw-haired boy with oversized ears went sheet white, but the thin-faced man only stared back disapprovingly, lips still pressed tightly together.

"You _will_ thank us,” he said, motioning to the hooded figure who had dragged Belle in. “When we free you from whatever they’ve done to bind you in this prison of mortal flesh, you will thank us.”

He held out a hand, and the hooded figure, almost reverently, handed him the knife that had been used to threaten Belle earlier. Dipper shook the bars of the cage, scraping the whole thing forward nearly a full inch across the chalk-covered floor, but unfortunately, the bars held. “Don’t you ḑ͟a͘͏r͏҉͜e͡ hurt her!”

The whispering got louder, and one or two of the robed figures were starting to shuffle uneasily, but a look from the thin-faced man quieted them all. At a gesture from him, they started to chant, in near-perfect unison, something in what sounded like Latin. The straw-haired boy looked like he was seconds away from passing out, and two of the women were exchanging uneasy looks across the circle, but none of them so much as stuttered.

As the chant went on, it seemed to build on itself, until the hall was full of echoes, a low annoying buzz reverberating through Dipper’s skull and setting his teeth rattling. It made it harder to concentrate, and _things_ kept bursting in fizzy fireworks across the back of his skull, little flashes of revelation or memory or – or _something_ that vanished as quickly as they appeared, leaving nothing in their wake but confusion and a frustrating sense of something _missing_. Dipper tried his best to ignore it, but as the chant went on, they came thicker and faster, a series of fragmented images and sounds and feelings piling up on themselves, smiles, screams, children’s laughter, blood oozing down walls, the flicker of candles and an overpowering scent of cinnamon, blood squelching underfoot, the cold sweetness of ice cream on his tongue, blue fire and phantom pain…

Through the flood of shifting, scrambling impressions, it took him a moment too long to realise that Belle was struggling against a hand in her hair, holding her head back, exposing her throat; that the thin-faced man was standing behind her, holding the knife above his head as he spoke above the chant. The words were in Latin, just like the rest of the chant, but somehow Dipper understood their meaning all the same. _With this sacrifice, I break your bonds. With this sacrifice, I summon you to me. With this sacrifice…_

Dipper didn’t need to hear any more. He cast around wildly for something, anything, to do to stop what he knew with cold certainty was about to happen. Sparks stuttered from his fingertips, flaring into flames as realisation struck him. He was trapped, literally, stuck in a cage with nothing at hand and no way of reaching out to anyone. If he’d been anyone else, there would have been nothing he could do.

He gave his wrist an experimental flick, and reached out, concentrating.

The knife was like a searchlight on some sense he couldn’t name and couldn’t describe, blindingly bright and scorching to the touch. Dipper skipped down past it and concentrated on the ropes around Belle’s wrists and ankles, the tape over her mouth.

Blue fire flared.

The knife came down.

Belle opened her mouth, gasped in a breath, and scrambled to her feet just in time, the knife barely grazing her shoulder. The thin-faced man muttered a curse that was definitely not in Latin as the chanting started to break up around him, gasps and shouts cutting through the buzzing echo, and Belle turned to face him, dodging and feinting to the left when he slashed to the right. She kicked him in the knee, and he gave a howl of pain, falling to one knee and clutching the wounded one with both hands. Belle turned to Dipper, who was already trying to figure out how he’d burned away her bonds and how he could do the same thing to the cage, and yelled, “Are you okay?”

"Yeah, I - Belle, look out!"

Belle spun, throwing up her left arm just as the thin-faced man pushed himself up, lunging at her with the knife. She gave a sharp gasp, and stumbled back a step, one foot landing inside the perimeter of the circle.

Dipper couldn’t see the look on her face, but he did see her shoulders go square and determined. And then, as the thin-faced man lunged for her again, she dropped to one knee and pressed the palm of her left hand flat against the floor, on the red chalk of the circle.

Blood dripped down her wrist from the jagged cut along her arm and splashed, quietly, against the floor.

The circle flared with golden light, racing out from the point where Belle sat crouched and speedily devouring every line of red chalk, leaving them burnt black.

In the absolute silence that followed, Dipper thought he heard Belle say, “Kick his butt, Dippingsauce.” He couldn’t be sure, though, because the world had already started to dissolve.


	14. Chapter 14

It was like waking up, for the very first time, or perhaps after a long night of dreaming of waking up, over and over again. The world went clearer, sharper, brighter, like a soap bubble he’d been seeing it through had finally popped, and everything was meaningful, everything connected by a web of brilliant threads that sparkled like the facets of the biggest diamond ever cut, made up of past and present and future that all flowed into each other and _through_ each other. They flowed through _him_ , as well, and the _power_ dragged him forward, and the little house of cards he’d constructed in the middle of the great roaring abyss and called a _self_ was stripped away with no more than a thought…

Alcor stood, and the cage (metal! And a few flimsy enchantments! How had he let himself be so easily held?) flew apart, bars whipping out of the circle to twine around wrists and ankles and, in a few cases, throats, until the unfortunate handful around his circle were immobilized in place. He raised a hand, and the thin-faced mortal with the knife that shone a little too brightly lost control over its muscles, every rope of musculature tensing until a few bones snapped with an appetizing crackle and the human was screaming delightfully. Alcor let it go, and it crumpled, like a marionette with its strings cut, clutching at its chest with clawed fingers and heaving great, sobbing breaths.

Alcor turned his attention elsewhere, leaving the human to its bright, stinging terror and the symphony of pain that the shattered bones played under its flesh. He had all the time he could possibly want to draw out its agony, to pull new notes of anguish from its throat before he ruined that as well. For now, he wanted only to savour the salt-sweetness of pure terror rolling off of every creature in the room, feeding into the power still flowing through and into him and making the oily shadows that surrounded him and bled from his blackened form roil and curl. Terror leapt in jagged, ice-white spikes from each of the figures in red gathered around the circle (except for one, who seemed to have lost consciousness) and from the smaller figure in front of him, the one he’d gathered his wings around without thinking the moment that he’d shaken off his human shape.

The one who, looked at through different eyes, shone like a beacon on a snowy night, like a lighthouse in a hurricane. Like a distant star severed from its constellation.

Mizar looked up at him, and he gave her a smile that bled gold, before another drop of her blood fell within the circle and the smile vanished. She was _hurt_ , and he remembered, with a rush of fury that made the ceiling shake and a thousand nameless winged black shapes pour screaming from it, just what had happened to bring them both here.

Mizar flinched when he took a step towards her, letting some of the shadows that shrouded him strip away. He walked past her, though, stopping only when his toes nearly touched the thin-faced human’s curled arms.

Despite the screaming orange-yellow of blinding pain still arcing off the human in fits and starts, it still managed to smile when Alcor pulled it abruptly upright. “My lord,” it wheezed, its voice weak but proud. “We, your most faithful, have laboured long and hard to restore you to -“

"M̕̕͡ơ̷͠ś̴͘͟t͠͡͏ ́͜͜f̡̢́͜a͢͟i̸̢̕͘͡t̀͘h̷͘̕͢f̀̀͏̴̡u͘͘l̡͘̕͟͠?̶̶"

The human fell silent, a flood of tremors shaking its body as it hung, suspended by Alcor’s power, in midair. “Yes - yes - yes! We, o lord, o most mighty one, we few alone sought you out when you disappeared, we - augh! - we alone found the way to release you from your enslavement, we _alone -_ ”

"And y̶e͟͠t̴̀,̷̵" Alcor interrupted, stopping the human’s breath with a thought and watching it turn slowly red as it struggled for air, "f͜o҉r ͟my ͞ _m̴̕͡os̨t͘ ̕͞f͡ą̶͘i̶̡t̡͢h̛f̶̧u̴l̷_ ,̵͜͠ you sure ha̴v̧e̷ a̵ l͘͞ǫ̶t͏̡ ͢óf̷̧͜ ̧t̵̶̕r̕ơ̴ub҉l͝e͜ w͞it̷h th̕e̶ _f͘͜͝i̸̴̡r̵͞͡s̢͜҉͢t̶̡͜ ̴̡͘ŕ̸͜͠͡u̢͏͡ļ͠e̵_ of w͢óŗs̵hi̴pp̴inģ ͘mé.͘”

He let the human turn from red to purple before unblocking its throat, watching it gasp in huge breaths with a grim satisfaction. “But because yo͡u _á̢̕ŗ̕e ̴_ m͢y̵ _m̀͡o̶͟s͟ţ ̵̛f̨a͟͡i̸̶t͢h̴f̷ul͟,_ I’ll give y̸òu o̡͘͝n̡ȩ̕͞ ̷̧m̷o̶͝r̵e͠ ̡ć̨h͝a̵͜nc̶̵ę.̶ ̴You tell me w͏h͞at̵ ̢th͏e ru҉l͠e̴̵ you ͟bro̷ke̵ is, and I m҉i̢ght͝ l̵et some of you l̡̀̀͜i̶̕͏҉v̀̕͞e̵͟͡͠.̶͢͞”

The human only gurgled weakly in response. Alcor looked around the circle, but other than a few whimpers, silence reigned.

"F̡͝i͠ne̶ then, ̸͘͢I’ll tell y̧ou̵," Alcor sighed, turning back to the thin-faced mortal, the one who’d dared to hurt _his_ Mizar, _his_ twin star, drawing the dark back around himself. Shimmering brickwork cracks of gold burst through the mask as he rose into the air, throwing his wings wide and letting power bleed from every pore, shadows pouring around the circle like a rising tide.

"Y̕o̵u҉ ̕d̴͟o̧͢͝n҉’҉̴̧t̶ ̧̕ t̸̶̖͉̝̠̟̻̻̲ò͎̺̗̞͓͡͠ṷ̜̺̞̻̕c̼̜h̥̟̲̹͢͟͡ ̵̢͍̬̯̹̝̯͈̀ w̷hat’͜s̨ ̶ _Ḿ̷̱̱̘̙͕̱̭̳̲̘̘͎̀͝ͅI҉̡́҉̨̟̱̜̖͕͚͇̬͍̞̳̝̙̲N̢̬͖͇̟͖̗̪̥̝̻̮̠̘͝͡E̸̷̱͍̹̣̫̰͕̺̘̦̣̯̜̺͢͜.̴̸͜͡͏͕̻̲̳̦̯̟̼”_

The mortal opened its mouth to scream, but no sound came out, only a thin, hissing breath. Pockmarks started to appear on the skin of its face, both the fabric of its robe and its skin starting to disintegrate under the onslaught of pure demonic fury sandblasting it away. Within seconds, it was flayed, muscle and bone exposed, eyelids worn away and one eyeball popping like an overripe grape while the other went cloudy and scratched. Even though its lips were gone, even though its throat was torn open, it still tried to scream, to beg, but Alcor only smiled. This pathetic creature would have slain h̡i͝s̕ Mizar without an ounce of mercy. It deserved no mercy shown to it.

He didn’t let up until there was nothing left of the mortal but bloody, scoured bones.

The terror from the rest of the circle was nearly solid by now, hanging in the air like fog. Alcor breathed in deeply, letting the shadows around the circle disperse so that the other unfortunates could see more clearly what had become of their leader. He stretched first one wing, then the other, reaching out and flexing every sense that he had, reveling in the glorious feeling of finally having all his powers once more under his command. The entire universe danced on strings laid out at his fingertips, and all he had to do was pull.

“Oh, it is gò̤̟̦o̩̦͍d̼̗̲͕̜̫ͅ to b҉e̵ ̢b͜ack̸,” he sighed, letting a golden grin spread lazily across the black mask of his face as he fixed each of the shaken, bound cultists in turn with a disconcerting stare. “N̛o҉w̧ …”

He held both arms out in front of him, cracking his knuckles, and let his grin go sharp and jagged.

“W͘͘h͠ó͡’s̵͟ n̷̷̛̕ę̶̛x̧͡t̡́͜͞?̶̕͏”

“Dipper!”

The name was familiar, as was the voice that shouted it. Alcor looked down, to see the shining soul, his twin star, staring up at him with her aura shot through with fear. It wasn’t like the peaks and spikes of terror that had the cultists around the circle shaking and praying and, in one case, wetting themselves, though; this was slower, rolling where the others’ was sharp, and warmer than the ice-white of the others’.

She wasn’t, Alcor realized, afraid for herself.

“I think they get the point,” Mizar said, crossing her arms over the picture of a cross-eyed kitten in a boot that decorated the front of her oversized sweater and giving him a defiant look.

“They don’͠t ̶ ‘g͟e̢t͟ th̢͡͡e̷ ̷̡̛ p̵̸̶ó҉í̶̸͝͞n̡̢̢̢̛ţ̡̛́’,” Alcor argued, floating down to put himself more on level with her, the black starting to peel away from his face. “They n̵̨҉èv͝ȩr͟͞ d͡o͠. They d̴o̕n͠’ţ ̧ l͠҉e̵̸ár̸̢n̶͝,̀ ͟͝Mizar. Ỳ́où͟͟ ̸ should kn̶ow̶ t̷ha̴t̨ ̵by n͟ow̢.̵”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about or what you just called me,” Mizar said, flatly. “I don’t think these guys are going to try sacrificing anybody ever again, though.”

A chorus of muffled variations on the word ‘no’ rose up from around the circle, and Mizar cocked her head to one side, giving Alcor a penetrating look. He coughed, suddenly (and ridiculously, she was _mortal_ , he had _nothing_ to fear from her, _nothing_!) nervous, and tried not to meet her eyes. The last of the black boiled away, leaving him in his usual mostly-human guise. He straightened his suit jacket and fiddled with his tie, wishing Mizar would stop giving him that look. “But t̸ḩe͢y h̡͟u͠ŕ̵t̵͠ ̧̨͘y͏̵o̶͠u̶̴͝ -“

"Dipper." The name again. Alcor flinched, but Mizar didn’t seem angry. Instead, she was giving him a pleading look, the blue-white of her fear turning the soft grey of a cloud-shrouded sky. "Can we please just go home?"

_Home_. The word called up, without warning, a whole host of memories, all shining with a warmth that would have stolen Alcor’s breath if he’d needed to breathe. He looked up and met Mizar’s – no, _Belle’s_ eyes, shrinking in apparent age as memories of the last twelve years and beyond started to reassert themselves, taking over in importance from the flood of power and vengeance that had carried him away.

“Yeah,” Dipper said, a little shakily, the echo in his voice dying back to only a faint sound rather than the buzz of distortion it had been. “Yeah, let’s – let’s go home.”

Belle gave him a small smile, and reached out a hand to grasp his. “And by ‘home’ I mean -”

“Back to the Library and – and Dad. Yeah.” Dipper smiled back, although his smile was a little weaker, more faltering. “This is going to feel like you’re falling. And, uh, I haven’t done this in a while, so…you’ll probably end up feeling like throwing up, too.”

Belle nodded once, squeezing his hand. Dipper took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and tessered them away from the circle of candles.

…

They stumbled out onto the lawn in front of the Library, into flashing blue and red lights, Dipper immediately clutching his head and Belle clapping a hand over her mouth. “Okay, not the smoothest ride ever,” Dipper groaned, before looking around, taking in the police car parked alongside the Library’s front doors, its lights ablaze, the patrolwoman leaning against the railing alongside the steps, deep in discussion with the twins’ - _Belle’s_ father. “How long were we _gone_?”

"Ooooh, I instantly regret all those enchiladas," Belle moaned, grabbing her stomach.

Up on the stairs, their father broke off in the middle of a sentence, his head whipping up to stare out over the roof of the cop car. “Belle?”

Belle broke into an enormous, relieved grin, her stomach troubles apparently forgotten. “Dad!”

Dipper hung back as Belle ran over to and up the stairs, past the startled policewoman, and flung herself into her father’s outstretched arms. He scooped her up and squeezed like she’d vanish if he let go, and Belle gave an exaggerated gasp and laughed. “Dad, I have to _breathe_.”

"I was so scared," the tw- _Belle’s_ father mumbled, but he did relax his grip some. “I thought - you’re hurt!”

Belle tucked the torn sleeve of her sweater and her injured arm behind her. “It’s…kind of a funny story?”

“A funny - what _happened_? Where’s Dipper? Are you -”

“What are you talking about, Dipper’s right -” Belle turned to look over her shoulder, and then paused. “Here? Bro-bro, why are you all the way back there?”

Dipper, over by the patrol car, shrank back, curling his wings around to shield himself and considering popping out of the physical plane to postpone the inevitable disaster. It had been hard enough for their – _Belle’s_ father to even look him in the eye when he’d still been in human form, and even though the memories of what had happened the first time he’d managed to gain a corporeal form at his parents’ house were old, they were still sharp.

The patrolwoman turning and giving a bloodcurdling shriek the instant she laid eyes on him didn’t help, either.

"Maybe I should…go," Dipper said, trying to ignore the way the woman was clutching her chest and pressing back against the railing, and Belle shot a scowl in his direction.

"Dipper Sterling - Pines - _whatever_ , you get over here for a hug _right now_ , or _else_.”

Dipper sighed, and slowly lowered his wings, letting them shrink back to their usual size and position, fluttering slightly at the small of his back. He took a few grudging steps forward, staring at the ground, and then stopped, taking a deep breath that he didn’t strictly need before looking up.

The tw- _Belle’s_ father didn’t look alarmed, or even surprised, to see Dipper’s demonic appearance, although he did raise an eyebrow curiously, and Dipper got the strong feeling that he was going to demand the whole story, sooner or later. That alone was surprising enough, along with the fact that he hadn’t screamed or gone pale or _anything_ (Mark had fainted, and Anna had shrieked and dropped the spatula she was holding and nearly upset a frying pan full of hot oil, _why wasn’t he screaming_ ), but even more surprising was the fact that when Dipper looked up, he slowly broke into a smile, holding out an arm to Dipper.

"I’m not your son," Dipper said, ignoring the look Belle was giving him and turning his eyes back to his shoes, the red and blue lights from the patrol car reflecting dully off the polished black leather and glinting sharply from the gold plates at the toes.

There was a sigh from his father and from Belle in unison, and a scuffling sound, but Dipper didn’t look up. Maybe it would be easier this time, when he was already expecting them to leave -

He wasn’t expecting Belle’s arms to wrap around him, warm and reassuring. He _really_ wasn’t expecting their father’s arms to wrap around both of them, pulling them both close against his chest.

"You’ve been my son for the past twelve years," he said, quietly, next to Dipper’s ear, and Dipper had to blink quickly to keep his eyes from overflowing. "I don’t see how anything’s changed."

Dipper shut his eyes, and threw his arms as far around his father and his sister as he could reach.


	15. Chapter 15

The policewoman spat out a mouthful of hot coffee when Dipper appeared in front of her desk in the station, covering him with a fine spray of scalding brown liquid. Dipper wrinkled his nose as he wiped coffee away from his eyes, and scowled at the mess it had made of his suit. He could will it away, of course, but _he’d_ always know where the stain had been, and that would _bother_ him until he could make a new suit from scratch.

(He tried very hard to ignore the tiny scrap of memory that shouted, in his voice, that doing laundry was a waste of time.)

"I forgot to mention this last night, and also I think you were in shock, but there’s a group of cultists tied up in the old meeting hall," he started, brushing droplets of coffee from his shirt. "They probably haven’t gotten free overnight, I used metal bars for the tying up part. Hey, are you okay?"

The policewoman’s eyes were so wide that they looked like they were about to pop out of her head, her jaw hanging slack as she stared, silent and frozen, at Dipper. He waved a hand in front of her eyes, then rapped a fist on her desk to make sure he was still corporeal and visible, but the only response he got was a soft splash as a rivulet of coffee rolled down her chin and dripped onto the desk.

"Right. Shock." Dipper looked around quickly before pulling a blanket out of thin air (really, it was coming out of one of the attic closets in the Sha- the Library, it was cheaper in energy than making a whole new one, Mike and Alice probably wouldn’t mind) and wrapping it around the woman’s shoulders. He surveyed the tableau thoughtfully for a moment before snapping his fingers, reaching into his suit jacket and dropping a newly materialized, fully filled-out incident report on the woman’s desk. "You guys can deal with that later."

It was almost a relief to get off of the plane of physical existence just to get the coffee stains out of his suit.

…

The hospital room was very white, almost blinding, and smelled strongly of disinfectant and faintly of blood. Margaret Angelica Northwest, better known to her friends and anyone who wasn’t her family as Peggy, fifty-six, twice divorced and now happily single, with three adult children and two horses she cared more about than any man she’d ever married, looked up as Dipper popped into the room, and quickly stifled a scream behind her hands. Not quickly enough, though, because her mother, Atlantica Marie Northwest, eighty-six, who had her daughter’s record beat with five divorces (and two husbands buried) under her belt, cracked one eye open and sat up in bed. “Is that that damn demon again? Tell him to come over here so I can _really_ give him a piece of my mind. And maybe a good wallop over the head.”

“ _Mother_ ,” Peggy whispered, gnawing on her fingernails as she shot a terrified glance in Dipper’s direction, and her mother gave an unladylike snort.

“I am eighty-six years old, Margaret, and I have had a heart attack, and I have put up with _enough_.”

“Yeahhh. About that.” Both women turned to face Dipper, who shuffled his feet awkwardly in midair, taking a deep breath. “I came to say sorry about the whole heart attack thing.”

"And what about the _curse_?” Atlantica’s glare was piercing, and Dipper reached up to rub the back of his neck.

"Heh. Yeah. That. Would you believe that I let a prank war with one of your ancestors get out of hand?"

Two perfect circles of crimson rose in Atlantica’s wrinkled cheeks as her mouth flapped open and shut. When she finally found her voice, it was heavy with disbelief. “ _Prank wa_ _r_ _?_ _!_ ”

"For the record, I won," Dipper said, and then leapt backwards when Atlantica launched herself forward, reaching out for him with both arms outstretched, screeching in fury.

"You _ruine_ _d_ my _weddin_ _g_ over some ancient _prank wa_ _r_? Terrence _die_ _d_ from the anaphylactic shock he went into after the strawberry debacle! This was all a _jok_ _e_ to you? I - ghh - _Margare_ _t_ -” Anything else she might have tried to say was lost amid the sudden frenzied beeping of the heart monitor pressed against the wall. She doubled over, clutching her chest and wheezing.

“Ohmigosh. Another heart attack? I can help -” Dipper started, but Peggy flew to her mother’s side, clutching her protectively even as she shot Dipper a glare through teary eyes.

"Haven’t you done enough already?"

Offers of magical cures and low-cost deals died on Dipper’s tongue. He wrapped his wings around himself and tessered away just as a team of doctors and nurses started to rush into the room.

…

"I could put the books back, you know."

Michael Pines, twenty-three, one of Willow’s line but possessing only enough of the Sight to get mildly uneasy in the presence of strong magic, jumped nearly a foot in the air when Dipper materialized by his elbow, dropping the spellbook with a cracked spine that he’d been assessing for repairs. “Augh! Don’t sneak up on people like that.”

“Sorry,” Dipper said quickly, looking around at the mess on the library floor, the mess _he’d_ made, rare and valuable books jumbled in a heap with covers torn half-off, spines broken, pages fluttering like limp feathers from downed birds. “But I _could_ put the books back the way they were. It wouldn’t cost much, either, I mean, you’re family -”

“No!”

The shout made Dipper flinch, but before he could apologise and vanish into the mindscape again, Mike shook his head, giving him a soft smile. “Sorry, that was rude. No, it’s just – most of these books either _are_ magical, have magical properties, or have been sitting around soaking up whatever’s in the spellbooks for so long that I don’t know what _more_ magic would even _do_ to them. Or us. No. I appreciate that you want to help clean up, but no using demon powers on the books.”

It was true, but a quick look at his aura told Dipper that there was more to the story. “And you’re scared I’ll screw you over if you make a deal.”

Mike’s smile got, if it were possible, even more apologetic.

"No, no, I’m not, like, _offended_ or anything,” Dipper laughed, waving a hand as if to brush it off, then awkwardly rubbing his arm. “It’s smart. When it comes to dealing with demons, trust no one, right?”

Mike huffed out a breath, blowing one unruly curl out of his eyes. “I had to learn that the hard way, unfortunately. You know one of my legs is prosthetic, right? I’ve got it tricked out with a whole arsenal from Candy’s, it’s basically my supernatural investigation toolkit, but it’s still a prosthetic.” He rapped the side of his knee and it made a hollow, plastic sound, before something went _click_ and a tiny silver pellet whizzed out of his shin, tearing through his jeans, and stuck to the wall, where it flashed red twice and then exploded, leaving a long scorch mark.

Mike froze, slowly turning back to face Dipper. “…I’ll paint over that. Anyway, point was that after you stopped showing up to summons, I tried summoning another demon instead.  _Once_. I thought that, because I knew how to deal with _you_ , I could handle anything any of the others might throw at me. And obviously I was wrong. I mean, I was an eleven-year-old kid. I didn’t have a clue. I’m just lucky that my dads found out what I was planning and stepped in, or…I don’t like to even think about how much worse it could have been.” He grinned ruefully, rubbing the back of his neck. “So yeah, I don’t make deals with demons.”

"I’m sorry," Dipper said. There didn’t seem to be anything else he could say. He wasn’t even sure exactly what he was sorry _for_. Disappearing for twelve years? Not being there to protect one of _his_ niblets? Coming back, now, with an entirely new family? It felt like all of the above and more.

Mike shrugged. “Not your fault. And hey, now I have a leg that can explode things and spray a fine mist of holy water in a twenty-foot radius.” When Dipper still didn’t so much as crack a smile, he sighed, and reached over to ruffle the demon’s hair. “You know, for some reason I remembered you being taller.”

"I was," Dipper mumbled. "But Belle’s twelve, so…"

Mike’s smile softened, and he gave Dipper a long, thoughtful look. Finally, he said, “Look, I meant it about using demon powers on the books. But if you really want to help, I could show you how to repair bindings by hand.”

"Really?"

"Really."

…

"So _this_ is why I felt like I could trust you.”

Dipper looked up from the bundle of pages he was stitching together to see Alice leaning over the counter, watching him with a thoughtful smile. “You’re the Pines family’s very own guardian angel. Demon. Whatever.”

"That’s me," Dipper agreed, with a grimace, setting aside the book he was working on. He deliberated for a moment, before adding, "You know, about that feeling that you can trust me? For a little while, when I got my memories back, I thought it might be because you’re the reincarnation of Wendy Corduroy -"

"Really? Sweet!"

"Except…you’re not." He couldn’t help a little snort of laughter at the way her face fell. "I thought you were, you do look _weirdly_ like her, but you don’t have her soul.”

"I don’t know whether to be disappointed, or creeped out that you can see my _soul_ ,” Alice said casually, clearly not really feeling either. “Who _a_ _m_ I, then? Like, Cleopatra or somebody? Joan of Arc? Maybe Amelia Earhart?”

Dipper bit his lip and peered at her thoughtfully, debating how much to tell her. “Think…more along the lines of P. T. Barnum,” he finally hazarded.

Alice gave him a blank look, blinking a few times, before shrugging. “Whatever, I’ll take it. Speaking of which…” She leaned farther over the counter, pointing one finger directly at Dipper’s nose. “I got you in to see that book, but I haven’t seen any cotton candy -“

Dipper blinked, and suddenly, mounds of fluffy pink spun sugar filled her arms, covering her face all the way up to her eyeballs. He couldn’t actually see her mouth, but he could tell by the way her eyes crinkled at the corners that she was grinning. “All right!”

There was a moment of blissful silence, broken only by the sounds of Alice furiously munching on cotton candy, before she said, “So what’re you working on?”

In answer, Dipper held up the parcel of pages that was a book and the heavy-duty needle and thread he was using to stitch them back together. Alice nodded thoughtfully.

“Mike suckered you into helping repair the books, huh?”

“I volunteered,” Dipper said, turning back to his stitching.

“What? Why? It’s not like this is _your_ problem -”

“Yes, it _is_!” Alice started backwards when Dipper threw down both the book and the needle, and he stopped, taking a few heavy breaths and trying to rein in the blue fire that had crackled all the way up his arms. “Look, I made this mess, and now I’m _trying_ to help fix it, so -”

“This isn’t about the books, is it.” When Dipper didn’t say anything more and didn’t look up, Alice heaved a sigh. “Look, kid – is it weird if I call you kid? I mean, technically you’re way older than me, but you _look_ twelve, and -”

“It’s fine,” Dipper muttered.

“Okay then. Have you talked to your dad and your sister yet? I mean really sat down and _talked_ talked. You know, touchy feely, heart-to-heart stuff.”

“I haven’t even seen them yet today,” Dipper sighed, and then, when Alice gave him an incredulous look, “I’ve been busy, okay? I left a lot of loose ends when I went off to play human, and a lot _more_ when I came back, and I’ve been _trying_ to put things back in order but all I can seem to do is make them _worse -_ ” He stopped, glaring up at the hundreds of jagged, wickedly sharp obsidian stalactites that had suddenly sprouted from the ceiling. “ _See?!_ ”

Alice didn’t answer, leaning back away from one particularly long stalactite that had shot down inches from her nose.

Finally, she said, “I think you should go talk to your family.”


	16. Chapter 16

In the end, even though Dipper worked himself into a panic too many times trying to decide what to say and what _not_ to say and how to even start, it was Belle’s father who sought _him_ out. And by ‘sought him out’, he really meant ‘summoned’, with a proper, if miniature, circle complete with tealights around the perimeter and a jumbo-sized candy bar in the centre.

“Is that all right?” Belle’s father asked, nervous blue-greens popping and fizzing through his aura. “The books said -”

“It’s perfect,” Dipper reassured him, looking wistfully at the burnt remains of the bar. “Maybe keep it outside of the circle for next time, though, because then you can trade it with me in exchange for me being solid for a while, _and_ I get to actually eat it like a person.”

“But then I need another sacrifice, don’t I? To get you here?”

“Well, no, actually. You can prick your finger -” Dipper saw the flickers of nervousness in Belle’s father’s aura start to grow, and quickly added, “or just say the chant. Or just call my name, even. I’ll know it’s you, I’ll show up.” He quickly changed the subject. “Why did you do all this, anyway?”

“We need to talk. And you kept avoiding me.”

“A _voiding_ you? I wasn’t -” Dipper stopped as Belle’s father raised an eyebrow, his shoulders drooping. “Okay, yeah, I was avoiding you. But not because of anything _bad_! I just…thought you guys needed some space. Maybe some time to think about things. You know.”

He didn’t add _and I’m still waiting for you to come to your senses, realise just what’s been masquerading as your child for the past twelve years, and take Belle and run as far and as fast as you can_.

Belle’s father let out a long, deep breath, the sparks of nervousness slowly fading from his aura as he shook his head, smiling. “I meant what I said last night. I see no reason this should change things – unless you want it to?”

“What?”

Belle’s father’s smile dropped, and the faint flashbulb-pops of nervousness returned. “I know – Mr. Pines showed me some of the scholarship when he was explaining what he found out from the journal. I know how old you are, and how powerful, and if you’d prefer not to go on pretending to be a child…”

It took Dipper a moment to remember that when Belle’s father said ‘Mr. Pines’, he meant Mike, not Mark or Stanford. “Oh. Right.” He shook his head, hoping that would help clear it, but all it did was briefly disorient him. “So you want to renew our deal, go back to not remembering? Is that what this -” he gestured to the summoning circle - “is about? Or do you just want me to go? I can alter everyone’s memories again, make it so that you never had a son, and all it’ll cost you are _you_ _r_ memories of me, so it’s actually in your favour -“

"Is that what you want?" Belle’s father asked, the flashbulbs flattening out into dull, overcast blue, and Dipper frowned in confusion.

"I thought that was what _you_ wanted.”

"Why would you think I’d want you to disappear? Or to pretend you’re not what - _who_ you are?”

Dipper shrugged, glaring at the symbols adorning his circle. “Let’s just say I’ve already done this once. And you were acting so weird ever since we got here - you couldn’t even look me in the eye when I was in human form! Can you honestly say you’re not even a little freaked out by all _thi_ _s_?” He waved a hand, encompassing himself from the top of his floating hat to the tips of his shiny black shoes.

"Well, the fangs are a little alarming," Belle’s father said, with a half-smile. That smile quickly dropped away, though, when Dipper didn’t smile back. After a moment of silence, Belle’s father finally said, "I was scared. I still am, a little, but it’s a familiar feeling for a parent. The same thing happened when Maya died, and I suddenly had twins to raise on my own. Heck, the same thing happened when you both started crawling. I don’t think _that_ fear ever leaves you. Not when you have kids.”

"Then why -"

"Because I didn’t _kno_ _w_. That book just showed up at one of the auctions I went to for the university and it jogged a few splinters of memory, but not enough. I only remembered enough to know we’d made a deal, but I couldn’t remember much of the specifics. And I didn’t know how much you remembered, how much of you was _you_ and how much was the Alcor from demonology and lore, and if my forgetting was part of our deal…I didn’t know what you’d do if you thought I’d broken it. So I pretended not to know anything, not to notice anything unusual, even though there was clearly something wrong. And I’m sorry for that.”

 “You thought I could hurt you?” He’d been alive for hundreds of years, Dipper reflected, he was an immensely powerful immortal being, it wasn’t _fair_ that his voice still cracked when he got upset!

“It wasn’t me I was worried about.”

“You thought I could hurt _Belle?_ ” Dipper swallowed hard, fixing Belle’s father with what he hoped was a steely glare and tried not to let his eyes water. “She’s my _sister_. I couldn’t do anything to seriously hurt her, even if I wanted to, which I _don’t_ -“

"That wasn’t what I meant!" Belle’s father squeezed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, wincing. "I was afraid you’d think the deal was broken. That you might withdraw your protection, or take back whatever magic you used to fix her lungs back when we first made the deal, yes. But also that we might lose _you_. I didn’t _know._ You have no idea how relieved I was to see you last night, to see you _both_ come back safe.”

This wasn’t really a human body. It shouldn’t react like one. And yet, Dipper still had a lump in his throat.

“If what you said last night meant that you didn’t _want_ to be my son anymore, then I won’t try to keep you here. But I don’t think that was what you meant.” Belle’s father reached out a hand and took Dipper’s, giving it a squeeze, the sudden warmth surprising. “I need you to know that there will always be a place for you in this family. For as long as you want it.”

"I -" Dipper started, staring down at their linked hands.

For the first time in a long time, words failed him completely. Instead, he threw himself out of the circle to wrap both arms around his father’s neck in a hug. Warm arms curled around him, and his father gave a short, surprised laugh when Dipper flared his wings and then tucked them around them both.

…

“Belle?”

Belle spun around at the sound of Dipper’s voice, her eyes lighting up briefly at the sight of him, before they went shuttered again, and she turned back to the forest and the slowly setting sun. “Oh, hey, Dipper.”

“What’s the matter?” Dipper asked, settling onto the roof beside her and letting his feet dangle over the edge, slipping onto the physical plane to see the sunset in full technicolour. He swallowed, hard, and stared up at the firebirds wheeling overhead as he started, “I totally understand if you’re still freaked out because of last night -”

“Pfff _whaaaa?_ ” Belle’s snort was loud and sudden and made Dipper jump despite himself, and he looked over with a rush of almost overwhelming relief to see her smiling. “Dipdop, you _disintegrated_ the guy who tried to kill me, I don’t think any of them would be stupid enough to try it again -” She stopped, with a glance over at her brother. “Oh. _Ohhhhh, right,_ you disintegrated a guy. I guess you weren’t talking about those cultist people then, were you.”

Dipper gave an uncomfortable grin.

Belle sighed, and leaned over, placing a hand over his. “Dippingsauce, we’ve already had this conversation. If it were anybody else, maybe I’d be freaked. But it’s _you_.”

“Wow. Thanks.”

“Hey, it’s true. You’re scary, but not _that_ scary.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

Belle’s smile vanished faster than a Hide-Behind that had nearly been caught on camera. “Nothing.”

“Well, clearly it’s _something_ , or you wouldn’t be hiding up here on the roof.”

Belle sighed, shuffling back from the edge of the roof and tucking her knees up to her chest. “Dad told me you guys talked about what we want to do now.”

“Yeah, a little bit.” Dipper kicked his feet over the edge of the roof. “I don’t think I can go back to thinking I’m human again. And I don’t know if I even _want_ to. So much stuff happened while I was gone -”

“So you’re staying here.” Belle wrapped her arms around her folded legs and pulled them closer to her chest, mumbling into her knees, “With your _real_ family.”

“What? That’s not – Where did you even _get_ that idea?”

Belle shrugged, not letting go of her knees. “They’re your family, right? The Pines? They’re all Mabel’s descendants. And this morning, Dad was talking about how he didn’t know if you’d want to come home with us, and -”

Realization dawned on Dipper. “You’ve been reading the journal, haven’t you.”

“Well, yeah.” Belle turned to face him, her eyes widening. “You’re not mad, right? I just wanted to know what’s going on, and you’ve been hiding all day -”

Dipper shook his head. “Of course I’m not mad. Why would you think that?”

Belle cocked her head to one side, raising an eyebrow. “Just _how_ many times have you flipped out on me for reading your dumb notebooks?”

"…Point.”

Belle turned her face away from Dipper and mumbled something into her knees, too quiet for him to hear.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“I _said_ , I bet if I was _Mabel_ , you wouldn’t care!”

Dipper managed to hold back for nearly a full minute before bursting into laughter. “Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how mad I used to get at Mabel for reading my notebooks without asking?” At the sight of Belle’s look of affronted shock, Dipper managed to stuff down the giggles that threatened to overtake him. “Look, if there’s one thing you should know about Mabel, it’s that she only scrapbooked the good stuff. We fought at least as much as you and I do.”

"Well, _duh_ , but…” Belle waved both hands vaguely, clearly at a loss for words. “But - she was your  _twin -_ ”

"So are you."

Belle shot Dipper a slight smile, which vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. “But I’m not her.”

“Why do you think I want you to be?”

The shrug that Belle gave as she turned back to face the forest was small and tight, and the grayish pallor that had settled over her aura grew thicker and bluer-shaded. “Why else would you do all this?”

Dipper didn’t say anything for a moment, watching the firebirds and considering how to explain. Finally, he said, “You’re right.” Belle’s head snapped up, and he felt surprise crackle off of her, settling quickly into disappointment, but he kept going. “I asked your dad to let me grow up with you because - Alice was right, this _does_ sound creepy - I recognised your soul as Mabel’s. He wanted me to save your life and keep you safe, and I was missing Mabel and missing being human, so we made a deal.”

"So I really was just a replacement for your _real_ twin,” Belle started, and Dipper held up a hand.

"Hey, would you let me finish?"

Belle frowned, her lower lip sticking out just slightly in a pout, but she nodded.

“Thanks. What I was _going to say_ was that yeah, at first, I just wanted Mabel back. But I gave up all my memories when your dad and I made that deal. Until we came here, I didn’t even remember she’d existed. I wasn’t _comparing_ you two, or anything. You were just my twin sister. You _are_ just my twin sister.” Dipper looked over at Belle, a familiar warmth spreading through him as he took in the slowly softening frown on her round face, her wide brown eyes behind her ever-present glasses, the tilt of her chin and the small quirk of the little smile that crossed her face when he said, “My adorable, annoying, twin sister. So don’t compare yourself to Mabel, okay? Because I don’t.”

“But if I have her soul -”

“That doesn’t change anything. You’re still your own person, you’re still Belle.” Dipper looked straight up at the darkening blue of the sky overhead as he said, “Mabel’s gone. And I miss her. That’s never gonna change. But she had a good, long life, and as far as I know she was happy to go when her time came.” He took a deep breath he didn’t strictly need, and smiled at Belle. “And if she were still around, I never would’ve gotten to meet you.”

Belle’s lower lip quivered, just slightly, and she bit down on it. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice thick, and Dipper leaned over with a small smile, bumping his shoulder against hers.

"For what?"

Belle shook her head with a smile, and shrugged, giving a choked-sounding laugh before leaning over to rest her head on Dipper’s shoulder. “Everything?” She uncurled, letting her legs dangle over the edge of the roof, and reached one hand down to hold Dipper’s.

Dipper laughed, too, and was surprised to find his own voice sounded just as choked as Belle’s. “My life is kind of messed up,” he agreed, and even though it wasn’t really funny, they both laughed.

"So are you going to come back home with us? Or are you going to go back to being all-powerful demon guy?" Belle asked, at length, and Dipper gave her hand a squeeze, grinning with a mouthful of shark teeth.

"Who says I can’t do both?"

…

There was a heavy, metallic slam as Belle’s father pushed the trunk of the little car closed.  

“You two got everything, right?” he asked, as Belle and Dipper came out of the hotel, Belle with the griffin she’d enlisted Dipper’s help in petitioning their father for wrapped around her shoulders, Dipper with his nose buried in a manuscript Mike had asked him to look over. He reached up every so often to adjust a bow tie that wasn’t there, making a frustrated noise every time he remembered he was back in shorts and a t-shirt. Technically, he didn’t _need_ to dress down, but if he was going to pretend to be human again, he was going to do it _right_.

Starting as soon as they left Gravity Falls, that was.

“You’ve got the wrong rune here in the circle for Malphas, and technically I don’t actually have a title in the Goetic hierarchy, but other than that, this is pretty good,” he said, stopping at the top of the stairs to hand the manuscript back over to Mike. “I’d avoid submitting it to Bantam, though, their entire catalogue of demonology offerings is so riddled with mistakes that nobody’ll take you seriously even if they do pick it up.”

“Thanks,” Mike said to Dipper, frowning at the manuscript in his hands. “If that rune’s wrong, I’m going to have to rework that entire section, it’s all based on the same translation.”

“Hey, if you need me to have another look at it, you can always give me a summons. No deal necessary. Just…not during school hours, okay?”

"Did we get Waffles’ food?” Belle asked her father, reaching up with a smile to pet her griffin’s head.

“The answer, just like all the other times you’ve asked, is yes,” Belle’s father sighed, with a smile to show that he didn’t really mean it. “Remember, you have to keep him from flying around inside the car while I’m driving.”

“Got it,” Belle said solemnly, and the griffin – Waffles – gave a short, warbling cry. “Dipper!”

Dipper looked down at the car, to see Belle furiously waving him over. “C’mon, doofus! I need you to put Waffles to sleep for the ride home.”

Dipper shrugged at Mike, who grinned. “Thanks for your help.”

“Hey, it’s no problem,” Dipper said. “It’s better than having misinformation all over the place, people getting the wrong demon in a circle, people thinking me and Mizar are _married -_ ” He shuddered, and Mike laughed, a short bark that he quickly cut off when the hotel door swung open.

“Hey, are you squirts leaving, then?” Alice said, leaning out and quickly turning her attention to her nails when she saw Dipper and Mike still on the porch. “Well, I guess that’s too bad.”

“Aw, you’re gonna miss us,” Dipper said confidently, and Alice stuck her tongue out at him.

“Get outta here before I do something stupid like invite you all to spend the summer.”

A huge grin bloomed across Dipper’s face, and he hurried down the steps with a wave as Mike said, “Alice, are you seriously offering _my_ house to random tourists?”

“I don’t know what came over me! And they’re not _random_. They’re Grunkle Dipper’s family, that makes them _our_ family.”

Dipper was still smiling when he slipped into the backseat of the car after Belle. He buckled himself in as their father slid into the driver’s seat, looking back over the seat at the twins. “Belle, what did I tell you about the griffin?”

Belle pouted, reaching up under her sweater and pulling out a bag of chocolate-covered peanuts. “Dipper?”

Dipper raised a hand, palm up, and Belle gave him a high-five. Blue fire flared briefly, and Waffles’ head drooped onto Belle’s shoulder as Dipper grabbed the bag of candy from Belle. “It’s taken care of.”

Belle’s father closed his eyes, shaking his head with a faint smile on his face. “Are you both ready to go?” he asked, turning back to the dashboard and turning the key in the ignition, the car rumbling into life.

Dipper and Belle exchanged a look, identical small smiles crossing their faces before they both turned back to face their father. “Ready!” they said, in almost-perfect unison, and Belle broke out in giggles.

In answer, their father kicked the car into gear. Dipper spun around to look out the rear window as they started to roll away from the hotel, waving to Mike and Alice on the porch. They waved back until the car went around a corner and the hotel disappeared behind a stand of fir trees.

“You’re seriously okay with coming back home with us?” Belle asked, as Dipper turned back around and settled into his seat.

Dipper smiled, and nodded, a feeling with the same amber warmth as the early-evening sun sinking into the trees before them swelling in his chest.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be? You guys are my family.” Dipper reached over, giving her a light punch on the arm, which Belle retaliated to with a sock in the shoulder that he was sure was going to leave a bruise. “Ow! Besides, it’s not like I won’t be back.”

The little car trundled on up the road, only occasionally rocking onto two wheels or spewing sparks out of the windows and the tailpipe, accompanied by shouts of “ _KIDS!_ ” from the front seat, until the town of Gravity Falls finally vanished into the trees behind it.


End file.
